


sometimes you have to break things to fix them

by valancysnaith



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst with a Happy Ending, Death Threats, Episode Fix-it, Hurt/Comfort, are whump wars still a thing bc i am in it to win it, look we're all doing it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-03-16 23:08:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13646361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valancysnaith/pseuds/valancysnaith
Summary: and by you i mean me, and by things i mean rafael barba





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FakePlastikTrees](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FakePlastikTrees/gifts).



> dealing with sadness by wallowing in it, like you do (at first i was just like oh my god he's so sad, what if he was SADDER? and then i was like, but what if he was IN DANGER too?)
> 
> TW for suicide mention, explanation in endnote. love yourselves, people.

When Rafael walked away from 1 Hogan Place, away from the New York County District Attorney’s Office, and away from Olivia Benson, there was no doubt in his mind which of the three he’d miss the most. Certainty was a cool balm on his shredded nerves—he’d been sure of so little recently. Doubt followed him everywhere, all the time. It hung a left with him on Worth Street and into Columbus Park, where he sat on a bench until he couldn’t feel his hands even through thick leather gloves. It tagged along when he went into the crappy cafe on Mulberry and bought a cup of burned coffee, and it made his fingers itch when he texted his mother to say he was coming over, because he owed her dinner and some answers.

The only thing doubt couldn’t touch was Olivia. He knew that, and he’d walked away from her anyway.

_Well,_ he taunted himself, _what’s one more regret this week?_

A thin thread of composure held him together, and it snapped the minute he shoved the most expensive Cuban takeout in Manhattan into his mother’s hands. 

“I fucked up, mamí. I fucked it all up,” he managed. Then he couldn’t talk anymore. 

It felt like he’d already been crying for _days,_ but intellectually he knew he hadn’t really let himself feel at all yet. The enormity of it was too much to process. This wasn’t just a hiccup in the routine or a setback at work—life, his life as he knew it and liked it, or at least had _thought_ he liked it, was over. For the first time ever he had no idea what tomorrow would bring, and he wasn’t much sure it mattered, either.

Because his wasn’t the only life that was over.

He sobbed himself into exhaustion on his mother’s couch, in her arms like he was young again, and woke up with a blanket tucked around his shoulders and an emotional hangover that didn’t feel all that different from a normal one—blinding headache, faint nausea, and total inability to face the real world. The idea of going back to his own apartment, carefully curated and a little clinical, living room stacked with boxes of books and framed diplomas, made him want to scream into the pillow and never stop.

So he shuffled into the guest room, put on the t-shirt and sweatpants his mother had left on the bed—she’d always known things before he did—and went back to sleep. 

* * *

It was like missing the last step on a staircase, Olivia thought. You didn’t face-plant, not exactly, but there was that sudden piercing moment of knowing that you’d lost control over a very simple situation, a swooping sense of instability. Except she was in that moment all the time.

She picked up her phone and put it down again countless times that first week. She scrolled through their old texts, read them like they belonged to strangers—some work-related, terse and to-the-point, other quips or stupid observations or inside jokes, timestamps every hour of the day and night. If she didn’t know these people she would have said they really needed to stop pretending they were best friends and act on the obvious feelings they had for each other which…was fair. And not exactly something she hadn’t known before.

She’d just thought they’d have the time for it to happen organically.

Days passed with dozens of texts written and deleted. Casual, off-hand: _Squad misses you. New guy sucks. No suspenders._ Personal, sincere: _I’m you now too, you know. I miss you. I don’t want us to say goodbye, not like that, not ever._ And sometimes, when she was drunk and angry: _Wrong answer, Rafa. AND I love you, AND I’m scared, AND I don’t know what happens now but at least I know that. That was the answer._

None of them sent, because she wasn’t fifteen, but after a week she did call. Just once, but his phone was off or the battery was dead, because it went straight to voicemail. She hung up instead of leaving a message; she wasn’t even sure what she would have said if he had picked up.

Maybe it was for the best.

* * *

“Go home, mijo,” his mother said eventually. “You’re a stronger man than this.”

Rafael exhaled bitter laughter. “I don’t know if I am.”

He had nightmares now. Most of the time it was the same one—standing over Drew’s crib, looking down at his face half-obscured by the ventilator, a second away from flipping the switch, and finding himself suddenly frozen. Completely paralyzed. He couldn’t move those final inches and he couldn’t step away. Couldn’t do anything but stand there, hand outstretched, throat thick, starting to panic because if he couldn’t do it he had to _not_ do it, it was now or not at all, but _now_ became an unbearable moment stretching on and on until he bolted awake, gasping and shaking.

He almost preferred the nightmares where he was found guilty. They were so vivid: cell doors clanged shut behind him and he felt the scratch of a prison-issue jumpsuit on his skin instead of expensive dress shirts and Liv never visited him because she hated him—or worse, did visit, and stared at him in cold silence like he’d betrayed her.

“Rafael,” his mother said, sharp like she’d been trying to get his attention for a while. “Listen to me. I can’t—won’t—condone what you did. Playing God—it’s not right, it’s not for us to do.”

“I know, and I’m—”

She held up her hand, cutting him off. “But you’re a good man. God will forgive you, and I’ll forgive you, and you’ll forgive yourself. And life will go on and get better, if you let it. Just don’t stand in your own way.”

“I don’t know where to start,” he admitted, quiet and helpless. “The case, it’s been everywhere, my face in the papers, everyone knows. I can’t go back to a courtroom, I’ll never be a judge—”

“So work for a private firm. You’ll make more money anyway. Or teach. Work for a non-profit, find a cause you believe in. Just stop moping around my house all day.”

He smiled because she wanted him to and kissed her cheek. “Por supuesto, mamí. Can I at least stay for dinner before you kick me out?”

“Por qué no,” she said graciously, and this time his laugh was almost genuine.

It wasn’t until later, when he was in the cab, that he felt something in the inside pocket of his heavy winter coat and pulled out his phone. Dead, of course. The first few days he’d done nothing but sleep and drift between rooms and watch old movies on TCM; even thinking of the outside world had been overwhelming, and communicating with it out of the question. His whole universe had shrunk to his mother’s apartment, the way he wanted it. There was nothing anyone could say or do that interested him. 

And then there was something nice about it, being unplugged for the first time in years. No urgent calls or demands for warrants at all hours, no last-minute disasters or plea deals that derailed airtight cases…

He did miss Liv, though. He missed her the way he loved her—unthinkingly, unquestioningly, like breathing. It was just one of those things he couldn’t stop without dying. Sprawled on his mother’s couch, he had mental conversations with her for hours where he said the right things outside the DA’s office. He didn’t walk away, or they walked away together. He showed up at her apartment a hundred times in his head and it got a little vague then, but common themes were the conversation they’d been putting off for years and the sex they’d also been putting off for years, sometimes in reverse order. 

He still didn’t know what to say in real life, but as the cab pulled up to his apartment and he looked at his brick of a phone he knew he needed to say _something._ As soon as it turned on again, before he lost his nerve. He had to—for himself, for her, for even the slightest possibility of a _them._

If he hadn’t been so eager to get to the charger in his bedroom, he might have noticed the scrap of paper flutter to the floor when he opened the door, or heard the quiet shuffle of socked feet crossing the living room.

But he was, so he didn’t.

* * *

 

Olivia had never done more voluntary paperwork in her entire career. She filed old cases, triple-cross-checked witness statements, wrote reports to 1PP that she’d been putting off for months, approved inane funding requests, and went through every form in the “rainy-day” drawer in her desk. Anything, no matter how monotonous, to keep her away from 1 Hogan Place.

“You can’t avoid the new ADA forever, Liv,” Rollins sighed when Olivia offered to follow up on a very shaky lead way out in Yonkers in return for Rollins testifying in her place on a case they’d worked together.

“Watch me,” Olivia said. Then, hearing how childish it sounded, “Maybe not. But a little bit longer? Please, Amanda?”

Rollins nodded reluctantly, accepting the trade, but there was a gleam of curiosity in her eyes that didn’t bode well for the rest of the conversation or Olivia’s increasingly obvious stalling tactics. “Hey, what’s really going on here? We’ve had squad turnover before and you haven’t taken it this hard.”

“It’s different when it’s the DA’s office,” Olivia said, bullshitting valiantly. “You get more face time with the squad, you learn to trust each other faster. ADAs you work with because you have to but it takes longer to—bond, I guess. Figure out how they tick, whose side they’re really on. It’s less—intimate.”

“You and Barba did get pretty intimate, didn’t you,” Fin deadpanned from the coffee station, where he’d been shamelessly eavesdropping. He raised an eyebrow at her as he stirred in sugar, poker-faced as always, while Rollins had a suspiciously-timed coughing fit, and there was no response to either but to roll her eyes and attempt to retreat to her office with dignity, so that’s what Olivia did. 

“He’s not so bad, Stone,” Rollins called after her.

Rolling her eyes wasn’t nearly as satisfying when no one could see her do it, Olivia found. She pulled the next random piece of paper off the “official-but-boring” pile and tried to refocus. 

Thirty seconds later she stormed back into the bullpen, waving it like a battle flag. “What the hell is this?”

Carisi snatched it out of her hands first and scanned the page. There wasn’t much there; it was a form letter, really. _Reallocation of state resources…detail to be terminated…threats due to status as N.Y. Assistant District Attorney…welcome to pursue civilian security measures…_

“They pulled Barba’s security detail because he doesn’t work for the DA anymore,” he said. Suddenly he frowned. “This is dated over a week ago.”

Olivia took the letter back and read it again, like it would make more sense this time. Her stomach lurched the way it did when she lost sight of Noah on the playground, a spike of panic that defied rationality. Just because she couldn’t see him didn’t mean he was in danger. She made herself speak slowly and calmly. “I didn’t know he still had that detail. He never said anything. I never saw anyone.”

“Well, not at work,” Carisi said. “They scaled it back to his apartment a couple months ago. He was getting most of the threats there anyway. Hangups, letters, some suspicious packages, a couple of sketchy guys hanging around late at night.”

“He never said anything,” Olivia repeated, like that was the key point and not an entirely irrelevant detail. 

“I’m sure he just didn’t want to worry you. You’ve been going through a lot recently, with Sheila and Noah and everything—”

“So he just dropped the subject?” Olivia interrupted disbelievingly, which, of course, was exactly what Rafael had done. What she’d let him do. The squad’s uncomfortable silence was answer enough, but she needed more information so she changed tacks. “They were frequent, these threats? Credible?”

Rollins and Carisi exchanged glances and nodded at the same time.

“When was the last one?”

Everyone waited for someone else to speak, and eventually Rollins was the one who admitted, “A few weeks before his last case. Within the past month.”

“Okay.” Olivia forced herself to take a deep breath. “Okay, okay. Shit. Has anyone talked to him since…everything?”

“You mean you haven’t?” Carisi sounded genuinely surprised.

“I’ve been…trying to give him space.” That sounded better than _pining_ or _sulking,_ anyway. Then she remembered, “I did call him once, a few days ago. No answer, straight to voicemail.”

“ _Barba_ had his cell off?” Fin echoed.

“Look, this is ridiculous. I’ll call him now, and he can tell us himself that we’re just being paranoid.” Rollins pulled out her phone, hit a number on speed dial, and put it on speaker. They all watched it vibrate on the desk, counted the rings, hoped not to hear it— _You’ve reached Rafael Barba. I’m not available right now. Leave your name and number—_

“Shit,” Olivia said again. She didn’t let herself think about how nice it was to hear his voice at all, even that aloof and sharp version he used in the courtroom or when he was trying to intimidate people.

Fin sighed. “He’s a grown man, Liv, let him handle his own business.”

“You mean the way he did when he conveniently forgot to mention _ongoing_ death threats in his exit interview with the DA? Yeah, I’m not taking notes from the Rafael Barba playbook.” Olivia was already scooping up coat and keys from her office. “Besides, I’ve got a weird feeling about this. Carisi, with me? Lunch on me if it’s a waste of time.”

“Sure thing,” Carisi said, a little too fast.

They were both practically running by the time they hit the street.

* * *

 

Rafael’s field of vision was dark with sticky shadows. He couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or closed, tried to blink but nothing happened. He wondered if he had eyes or a body at all. Drifting in some way, he thought of a feather dropped from a great height, floating gently but inexorably to the ground. He thought of quicksand with a child’s fear, and how it consumed you faster if you struggled.

“Oh, Rafa. You’re in trouble this time, aren’t you?” Olivia said, soft and close by. Rafael couldn’t see her. Panic made him clumsy and he needed an anchor. Olivia had never been that; she’d been the one setting him adrift, but at least she’d always been there beside him. She’d never left him alone.

Olivia was dark brown hair in the shadows—he missed her highlights, sometimes—and liner-ringed eyes with bags under them like she hadn’t slept in days, a smile soft with sympathy and a way of making strangers trust her on sight. People she’d never met wanted to help her; it was what made her so good at her job. Rafael cast out for her and she reached back, and that would have been everything, safety and love and worth the world, if he was capable of feeling anything other than the unshakeable conviction that he was in danger.

“Something’s wrong, Liv, something’s so wrong.”

“Yeah,” Olivia said, in that _no duh_ voice she used when he was being especially stupid. “You’re not breathing, are you? Take a deep breath. Now.”

Rafael couldn’t remember how. He wanted to, he knew he needed to, but the mechanism was out of reach. It required lungs and air and an autonomic nervous system without glitches.

“ _Now,_ Rafael!”

She sounded scared. He didn’t want her to be scared, so he took a gasping breath that turned into a hacking cough, and his eyes flew open _._ He didn’t know where he was and he didn’t know what was happening and his heart was going to break bones on its way out of his chest, he could feel it. His sternum would splinter and then shatter under the force of its pounding. An adrenaline rush was just a chemical reaction in the brain, the release of epinephrine at an enhanced rate in response to external stimuli, but in the middle of one it felt like the end of the world. 

His senses went from numb into overdrive all at once. He was in his apartment. The kitchen. Alone. The hardwood floor was icy on his back and the side of his head hurt like he’d hit a brick wall temple-first and there was a creeping weakness in his whole body that went deeper than muscle and bone, which made no sense considering he should have had the energy of a panic attack. With every thump of his heart there were rushes of wet warmth between his fingers and he thought, _Oh, oh, oh my God._

The attack came back to him in agonizingly slow pieces. Two men…three men? They’d been on him so fast, had him up against the wall with a forearm cutting off his air before he could even shout for help. In the dark he couldn’t see but his hearing compensated and every hissed word echoed against the redness that throbbed behind his eyelids. Absolute hatred in a voice still made him feel ten again and just as helpless as when the voice had been his father’s instead.

_Character assassination of a good CO wasn’t enough, huh, Barba—you had to actually kill someone for your cop friends to see what scum you are—_

_Don’t worry, we didn’t forget about you like they did—_

_Barba the Baby Killer, see that headline? Catchy stuff—_

_Less of a public statement doing you in now that you’re out at the DA, but one character assassination deserves another, don’t you think?_

_You’re dead either way._

Then…then what? A gap. They’d been in the hallway, then suddenly the kitchen. Coat, jacket, tie, dress shirt all gone, he couldn’t remember when that happened, or why he was down to just a t-shirt when it was _so cold._ He’d blacked out from the oxygen loss, maybe. 

He was too busy gasping in air to struggle when they held him down over the sink and a strange, slicing pain lunged out of the dark and lit up every nerve ending from his elbows to the tips of his fingers. It was like nothing he’d ever felt, completely devoid of context. Incongruously he’d thought of a fish, filleted in half and spread open for deboning, slimy and sloughing scales everywhere. His father had taken him fishing once; he’d hated it. There was a faint dripping noise of liquid against metal, like they’d turned on the sink, but he didn’t feel any water and it didn’t lessen the pain at all.

The last thing he remembered was a beefy hand winding its fingers in his hair and yanking his head down, where he heard more than felt the impact as his skull bounced off the countertop like a basketball. 

_One character assassination deserves another, don’t you think?_

Fucking idiots, he thought. Olivia would see through this in a second. It was so sloppy and…and _stupid._ She wouldn’t even need CSU or forensic evidence; she’d find his body on the kitchen floor and know immediately that there was no way he could have slit both his wrists with that amount of force and fallen at the right angle to hit his head that hard, and she’d call it what it was—a homicide staged to look like a tragic suicide on the part of a disgraced ex-ADA whose guilt had consumed him.

Except that didn’t negate the part where she found his body on the kitchen floor. He didn’t like that part. She’d be scared again, and sad, and horrified until she figured out what had really happened and _then_ she’d be furious but still sad. She’d lost so many people already—he really hadn’t meant to be one more of them, even though he had walked away from her, even though he had said _move on_ like it meant from her and not just from the job that had been slowly killing him.

Well, quickly killing him, now. And he didn’t even have the job anymore so that was…something. Ironic, possibly? He wasn’t sure.

The adrenaline rush of waking up was fading. Good—he’d lose blood more slowly if he calmed down. But also bad—he was starting to feel sleepy again. Sitting up wasn’t going to happen. Even if he’d had the energy for it his whole torso was tacky, basically glued to the floor, but he managed to lift his head and stare down the length of his body, a little blearily but enough to get a sense of the size of the pool of blood he was lying in.

It was…oh God, it was big. He had been unconscious for a while. Probably too long.

_Get your ass in gear, Barba. Do something. You owe me an apology and decades of squabbling, okay?_

The voice in his head sounded like Olivia. It had for a long time now. Years, maybe. He hadn’t been lying when he said she’d weaseled her way into his life. She was the voice in his head, she was in his dreams whether he wanted her to be or not, she was there even when she wasn’t, and all he’d given her back was some stupid platitudes about colors and open hearts and a kiss on the fucking forehead.

What was he supposed to do about it now? Assuming his attackers hadn’t taken his phone, it was still dead, so even if he could get to it he couldn’t call her or call for help, which is what he definitely should do first, but it seemed less important than talking to her one more time. Write a note? In what, on what? The only materials at hand—literally—were too macabre to consider and only guaranteed to traumatize her more. If he went back to sleep at least he’d get to see her in some way, even if it was just a hallucination.

_I swear to God, Rafael, I will kill you myself if you die like this._

“For you, Liv,” he sighed, and took a deep breath, and somehow managed to unstick his left arm from the floor and roll onto his side. Then another breath to lift himself on his right elbow.

_That’s better. Keep going._

He promised her he would, for as long as he could, and tried not to think about how that wouldn’t be very long at all.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> look whatever it seemed like a two chapter story at the time

“Where is he? Is he going to be okay?” 

Rollins’ accent always got thicker when she was upset, and as she rushed into the ER with Fin beside her she was practically drawling. Ordinarily Olivia thought it was more charming than she’d ever let on, but there was nothing ordinary about today. She never wanted to live a day like today again. She didn’t even want to be living it right now. The shitty hospital coffee sloshed against the sides of the paper cup—her third since they’d gotten here two hours ago—but that was her hand shaking, it wasn’t the coffee’s fault. Her other hand was shoved in the pocket of the winter coat she’d never taken off for some reason even though there was blood on it, fingers clenching and unclenching rhythmically. Like this was something she could solve by punching it.

She _really_ wished she could solve this one by punching it.

“Liv?” Rollins said, still there, still waiting for an answer.

“We haven’t heard anything since they took him back,” Carisi said, coming to the rescue. “Docs said he’d need blood transfusions and something about a possible concussion.” 

“Was he conscious when you found him?” 

Carisi couldn’t answer this one; Olivia had been through the door first, and had him calling 911 within a fraction of a second. So she was the one who had to admit: “I don’t know.” 

* * *

No answer when she buzzed the apartment from downstairs. No answer when the doorman called up. No answer when she pounded on the door so hard her fist ached, or when she shouted his name loud enough to pierce through a deep sleep, loud TV, and shower all at once. A neighbor stuck his head out the door to complain, saw her face, visibly gulped, and ducked back inside.

Worst of all, there was no answer when she kicked in the door and saw his head and shoulders haloed in the light from the hallway, sprawled on his stomach with one arm above his head like he’d just decided to take a nap between the kitchen and the entryway. She didn’t even need to flip the switch by the door to see that the wood around his body was stained a different shade from the rest of the floor.

“Carisi,” she said, and her tone of voice was enough. She could hear his heavy Staten Island accent on the phone with 911, clipped with urgency, as she flicked on the light and got her first good look at…she didn’t think _the body_ because she couldn’t think that, but it wasn’t Rafael, not like she knew him. 

Her Rafael would have been charged with contempt if a judge had ordered him to stay still for more than ten seconds. He was always tapping his fingers restlessly, chewing on the tips of pens, wrinkling his forehead or raising his eyebrows as he listened, or talking circles around everyone else in the room. A few times she’d come back to her office late at night to find him napping on the couch while he waited for her; he even twitched in his sleep. She’d never seen him this still, not in six years. She had to feel his shoulder rise and fall under her hand to believe he was breathing at all and even then the movement was hitched and hesitant, so slight she almost missed it. And irregular—he was there, but barely.

The reason why painfully obvious. The arm thrown above his head was turned toward her and she couldn’t reconcile a sight that belonged at one of their grislier crime scenes with his face right next to it. He looked ten years older than the last time she’d see him, gray in his hair matching waxy gray skin. Gently, like it was even possible to break him more than he already was, she untucked his other arm from where it was trapped under his body and nearly bit through her lip when she saw the same devastation there. It was too much—

It was _too much_. 

Even if he’d been out of his mind on some kind of drug that numbed pain receptors, there was no way he could have done this to himself. Too many cuts, too deep; this level of violence was a sign of personal animosity, not self-loathing. It was a message. Someone had tried to carve him to pieces like an animal. Left him to bleed out like one, too, alone and helpless to do anything but drag himself as far from the site of the attack as he could. As confirmation she saw his coat, jacket and shirt tossed in a pile a few feet away. If there was one thing she knew about Rafael Barba it was that he’d never disrespect an Armani suit by leaving it wrinkled on the floor, especially if it was literally going to be the last thing he’d ever do. He’d be deliberate about this the way he was deliberate about everything—recent behavior aside—if he meant it, and not so haphazard.

“I see it. It’s a mess,” she told him softly, like this was just another conversation where he hurled evidence at her until she cut him off with _Jesus, I get it, you’ve convinced me_. “Hear me, Rafa? I know you didn’t do this.”

She leaned over him and grabbed the dress shirt by the nearest sleeve, yanking it to her and pressing it over his left arm, then did the same with the jacket and his right. Not that either did much good—the danger was in the blood already lost or in damage she couldn’t see—but it gave her something to do and covered the wounds that turned her stomach with their mindless cruelty. Not much could still do that to her, these days.

But that was Rafael all over, wasn’t it? Always the exception, always the one who broke her rules. He’d been turning her life upside down since the day they met, and not even trying.

“I’ll buy you new shirts, okay?” she said as the expensive fabric soaked through. “As many shirts as you want.”

Her voice and hands both shook but it helped to use them. She had an inexplicable conviction that she could anchor him here by sheer force of will alone; if she touched him he’d feel it, if she talked he’d hear her. He was in there somewhere, her Rafael, his skin was warm and he’d never given up on a fight in his life, even if it was only to prove that he was smarter and more stubborn than his opponent. She left smeared red on his face when she tapped it lightly and tried to wipe it away with her own sleeve.

“I have so many things to say to you, you jackass. I’m going to yell at you for hours and you’ll listen to every word. Letting you leave the first time was a mistake. You do _not_ get to leave me again.”

With most of his face pressed to the floor, she would have missed the minuscule tightening around his mouth if she hadn’t been literally two inches away. But she saw his lips move, even if there was no sound behind it, saw him exhale something that looked an awful lot like her name into the hardwood. She froze, alert for any other signs of consciousness, but his face had gone slack again. Like a blow to the diaphragm it hit her, so hard she almost choked—she’d never loved anyone the way she loved him. It would be cowardly to keep pretending otherwise and she wasn’t a coward, or at least she couldn’t be anymore, not about this. Not _after_ this.

“Bus two minutes out,” Carisi said behind her. She nodded without raising her head. She heard his breath catch on a curse as he saw Rafael’s body but he kept going, moving past them into the apartment with his gun drawn. It was muscle memory to sweep a room for threats before giving attention to anything in it, and Olivia had deliberately ignored that instinct. There could have been five murderers in the bathroom; let Carisi find them. She was not leaving Rafael’s side. 

“Two minutes, okay?” she said, and kept her sticky stained fingers entwined with his as they waited for the shriek of ambulance sirens down Park Avenue.

* * *

Rafael had a full mental rolodex of fantasies about Olivia Benson, but this was one that never got old: the one where she met him and his briefcase of case notes at the door of her apartment in leggings and an oversized sweater, tired but relaxed in that way that came from spending quality time with her son, and smiled as she invited him in.

“Can I leave you to get set up out here? It’s story time. Five minutes, I swear,” she’d say, like being off-schedule because of Noah was a one-time occurrence and he didn’t arrive in the middle of story time _every_ time. 

“Yeah, of course. No rush.” 

“There’s leftovers in the oven too, if you’d pull them out?”

“Sure.”

He’d unpack his briefcase on the coffee table, sometimes after moving Noah’s stuffed animals or Lego monolith of the day, arrange the files in the order Olivia needed to see them, and then pull the warm plates of something or other from the oven like she’d asked. Spaghetti, a casserole, chicken tenders, shepherd’s pie, meatloaf—always kid-friendly, never restaurant-quality, but he’d peel back the tinfoil on the plates, add cutlery from the drawer by the sink, and bring it all out to the living room like there were Michelin stars on the line.

“Thanks so much, really,” she’d say when she came back and flopped down on the sofa in front of the food and work—with careful delineation between the two, because tomato sauce and case files did not mix. “Noah was a handful tonight, I never really got to eat myself. Figured you probably hadn’t either.” 

“Objection, speculation.” 

“Based on a very consistent pattern of behavior. Am I wrong?” 

He’d always make sure he was chewing by that point, as an excuse to shrug instead of speak, because what he wanted to say was guaranteed to make things awkward. The reckless—and truthful—answer went something like: _It doesn’t matter, does it, whether I’ve eaten or you’ve eaten, we’d still be here anyway because you like doing this—feeding me, making me feel welcome in your home, separating our time here from our time at the office, and you don’t have to lie to yourself or to me about it. When are we going to stop making excuses for doing these things, Liv, and be honest with each other about why we do them?_

But he’d rather keep this time with her, shadowed by half-truths as it was, than risk it all in the name of honesty neither of them seemed ready for. It was enough, what they had. Most of the time, anyway.

As far as fantasies went, this was one of his favorites because of how often it had been real. But now something felt askew. He wasn’t quite sure whether this was an especially vivid fantasy or real and he was just sick enough for the world to seem a little off, slippery or distorted like those fun-house mirrors that had scared the shit out of him as a kid.

“You okay, Rafael? You seem a little distracted.”

He blinked to find Olivia had scooted close enough to put her hand on his arm and was frowning slightly, looking like she was half a second from feeling his forehead like he was Noah’s age. It wasn’t something you could ask, was it— _Hey, Liv, totally random but…are we really here?_ He did an internal assessment. He couldn’t remember the cases or the faces of any of the jurors from that day but here and now, that had the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of real life. There were inconsistencies in the witness statement they were reviewing, a string unraveling at the right wrist of Olivia’s sweater, the lasagna was lukewarm, not in the oven quite long enough. If this was a fantasy it would be perfect, wouldn’t it?

Except this was its own kind of perfect, and he decided he wasn’t going to give it up just because it might not be real.

“Yeah, of course. A little tired. Coffee, maybe?”

She smiled in silent agreement, squeezed his arm, and went into the kitchen, reassured so easily. Quiet, familiar noises drifted out to the living room—water into the pot, grounds into the filter, then the hiss and pop of the coffee as it percolated. He let his eyes drift closed for just a second.

_The howling noise that filled his ears was as unbearable as the obstruction that filled his throat. He tried to scream but it came out choked and hurt so much that he forced himself to be still, and even then the pain was everywhere and he wanted to throw up or maybe die just to make it_ stop _. There was a voice in his ear that meant safety even if he couldn’t quite place it but when he tried to turn in its direction it was drowned by other voices, garbled and anxious, and he couldn’t move, he could only_ be there _and endure until his mind snapped and freed him from whatever the_ fuck _was happening—_

“Here you go,” Olivia said, putting a cup down in front of him. Steam rose off it and it smelled like the expensive beans she bought at the Union Square farmers market because she knew they were his favorite.

A simple breath had never felt so blissful.

“Thanks,” he said, and took a scalding sip so she wouldn’t see his face, in case he looked as shaken as he felt. He kept his hands steady only through sheer bloody stubbornness. “So, you think the sister is covering for her mother because—”

He tamped it down, the fear and confusion, and made it through another half hour of talking and teasing and a little actual work before he got up to refill his coffee cup, feeling almost normal again. But as he came back from the kitchen a head rush swept over him, so abrupt that he didn’t evenhave time to brace against it.

_There were words in the air, presumably spoken by someone though he felt them more as abstract concepts manifested from nowhere. Platonic entities, or something equally nonsensical. Shock. Two and a half liters at least. B positive. Head trauma. He had no idea what any of it meant. He’d tipped into a moment of sensory overload defined by flashing red and blue lights that took up the whole world. He’d had a nightmare like that once, hadn’t he?_

“Fuck, I’m sorry, Liv.”

An entire cup’s worth of coffee spread across the white carpet, mockingly slow. The mug lay on its side in the middle of it, somehow still in one piece.

“The carpet—I’ll fix it, let me—”

“Forget the coffee and the carpet. Sit down, Rafael.” Olivia had to physically steer him back to the couch and push him down, then kept her hands on him like she expected him to drift away again. “You disappeared on me for a minute there. I’m worried you might have had some kind of seizure. Do you know where you are?”

“I’m at my friend’s apartment, being a spectacular klutz,” he said, trying to lighten the mood, but she didn’t smile.

“I’m going to check your pulse and pupil dilation, okay?”

“If it makes you feel better,” he sighed, and held still while she put her fingers against his wrist and then tilted his head back and forth very carefully, staring deeply into his eyes like nothing mattered more than whatever she saw there. It was exactly what he wanted, and happening for exactly the wrong reason.

“Your pulse is a little fast.”

“It’s the caffeine.”

“You’re a bad liar.”

“I’m a great liar,” he said.

That coaxed a smile—small, but there. “Not to me, I hope.”

He shook his head, though he did wonder—did lies of omission count? Did the lies he told himself _about_ her count? He told himself they didn’t so he could tell her the same but today he was tired or sick or cracking up a little and he was so sick of whatever it was they had instead of whatever it was they could have.

“Liv, I need to tell you something—”

_His whole field of vision went white, like snow blindness except he hadn’t been skiing this year or like he was on his back staring at the world’s most boring ceiling. He had the impression of movement and urgency—_

He blinked. Frowned and tried again. “I need to tell you that—”

_—he was trapped, he couldn’t move, the voices had tied him down and shoved a metal pipe down his throat and he couldn’t get away and he would have been angry if he hadn’t been so scared._

He blinked again and doubled over coughing, trying to dislodge the object he could still feel blocking his airway. Olivia reached out to steady him and he felt his hand slip when he reached back and that was…wrong. His eyes were watering but even through a film of tears he saw huge swaths of red on her skin. For a panicked second he thought she’d been injured but it wasn’t her, it was only everywhere he’d touched her, and he choked in a way that had nothing to do with coughing because there was blood all over his hands, _absurd_ amounts of blood like he’d plunged his arms into buckets full of the stuff and pulled them out bright red and dripping.

“Rafael? Talk to me. Take a deep breath and talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong.”

She couldn’t see it. How could she not see it? It was _everywhere,_ the couch, the carpet, his clothes and hers, how could she not know, how could she not just _know_ this stupid obvious simple truth even if he couldn’t make himself say it?

There was no pain, it didn’t hurt, but all the same he didn’t entirely mind when everything went white again and then, very suddenly, black.

* * *

“Medically induced coma,” Olivia repeated. They were words she knew in an order she knew them but they didn’t make sense this time.

“It was a very heavy blow to a very sensitive area,” said the doctor, who probably had a name that Olivia could not have cared less about. “He hit his temple with such force that essentially his brain…bounced off the inside of his head. So you have two potential problems, the initial injury and the secondary trauma that occurred because of it. The medical coma gives his brain a chance to heal from any swelling or bruising and also lets us run tests to determine if a more aggressive treatment plan will be required.”

Something about Olivia’s face made him take pity on her, enough to drop the disinterested-doctor veneer and talk to her like a human. “Look, it’s basically just making sure he rests. Between the head trauma and the blood loss his body was put through an incredible amount of stress. We’re buying time for him to recover, that’s all. It’s as preventative a measure as we can put into place after the fact.”

“Can I see him? I know he’ll be—I just want to see him.”

“When we’re done with the initial battery of tests there’s no harm in sitting with him. We’ll let you and your friends know.”

Olivia nodded. Rafael’s mother was on her way and the squad was still here hours later and she’d been chosen as point person between the waiting room and the hospital staff by default, it seemed. But she needed a moment, so she ducked into the bathroom on her way back and just stood at the sink, staring at herself in the mirror. 

“He’ll be fine,” she told her reflection, whose makeup was a little smudged and eyes a little bloodshot even though she couldn’t remember crying at any point. She wasn’t shaking anymore; that was something. 

She’d get through this. So would he.

It was the only outcome she was willing to consider.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can you tell i was intubated once and HATED IT lol


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i call this chapter "an ode to rafael barba's perfect eye roll"

“There’s something I need to tell you. It’s something I’ve felt for a while now, but if you share it with anyone I will  _absolutely_ deny it. Ready?” Olivia shot a quick glance at the door, making sure they were alone, before she leaned forward and whispered into Rafael’s ear. “Your mother scares the shit out of me.”

She sat back and relaxed as much as the uncomfortable hospital chairs allowed, heaving a sigh of relief. “Whew. Feels good to say that out loud.”

Lucía Barba had a way of talking to you like she heard everything you were saying  _and_  everything you weren’t. She always had a follow-up question and the conversation didn’t end until she was satisfied with the answer, which made her a godsend with the doctors and incredibly anxiety-inducing in casual conversation. 

Though that of course implied that any conversation with her could be “casual,” which had not been Olivia’s experience at all. From the moment she’d swept into the hospital Lucía had been cool, collected, and brutally efficient. Her greeting had been a brusque “Detective Benson. You found him? Tell me everything.”

Olivia had recapped the entire nightmare of a night—it was going on 1 a.m. by that point—while Lucía listened, an almost visible list of follow-up questions forming in her head.

“This letter about his security detail, did it mention any imminent threats? Anything he would have known about as he went home?”

“No, Mrs. Barba—”

“Lucía, please. But you and Detective Carisi went to his apartment immediately anyway.”

“Lucía. Yes. I had a…feeling. Nothing concrete but you learn to trust your gut in this job.”

“Well, I’m grateful for your feelings about him, for Rafi’s sake.”

Which wasn’t what Olivia had said  _at all_ and they both knew it, but it would have been stranger to correct the implication than let it slide and besides…Lucía wasn’t wrong. Olivia hadn’t had time to figure out how long she’d had them or what exactly she intended to do about them but she had feelings for Rafael, that was undeniable. Had been since she’d looked down at his blood all over her hands and known they couldn’t waste any more time.

So she’d just nodded and said, “Me too.”

Since then she and Lucía had become a formidable team. They traded shifts at the hospital, took turns hassling the doctors, kept in near-constant contact via texts. She was due to stop by any minute so Olivia could go to work, pull a double shift, be home in time to make Noah breakfast and get him to school, catch a few hours of sleep, and then do it all over again. It was quickly becoming obvious that this routine was unsustainable, but giving up any part of meant giving up time with  _someone,_ even if that someone was Rafael, who would never know.

He’d been in the coma for five days.

“Any change?” came a now-familiar voice from the doorway, and Olivia looked up smiling.

“Lucía, hi. The swelling is still decreasing at a consistent rate, tests are encouraging. They’re optimistic they can stop the drugs this weekend and give him a chance to wake up on his own.”

Lucía sighed with relief. “Well, that’s the first piece of good news I’ve heard all day.”

“Trouble at the charter school?”

“There’s always something,” Lucía shrugged, clearly not interested in talking about it. She could compartmentalize like no one Olivia had ever met.

Respecting that, she surrendered her seat by the bed, moving to gather up her coat and purse from the chair in the corner. Then, because Lucía had her back turned and what no one else knew wouldn’t hurt them, she bent down and kissed Rafael’s forehead, then squeezed his hand before stepping away.

There were times when she wondered why she even bothered to leave the hospital when she spent most of the time away from it thinking about Rafael anyway. Every now and then something caught her whole attention—the high school freshman who came in to report that her teacher had raped her, a few suspect interrogations, time with Noah in the mornings—but mostly her thoughts drifted to back to that room like a compass needle to true north.

It was easy to remember because nothing about it had changed for days. On the table, the same flowers from the squad, Rita Calhoun, grateful ex-clients, and relatives she’d never heard of. Next to the bed, the same beeping monitors and slowly-emptying IVs. And in the bed, the same silent sleeping Rafael, who had lost weight because that was what happened when all your nutrients came in through an IV, who was growing a beard he didn’t know about and Olivia thought was rather sexy, whose mouth always hung slightly open for the intubation tube taped in place. Bandages had become unnecessary after a few days so all the stitches on his arms and at his temple jumped out black on pale skin. There was something grotesque and doll-like about them that Olivia felt viscerally but couldn’t articulate. She kept the blankets pulled over them when she could.

The doctors stopped administering the drugs that kept him comatose at the beginning of one of Lucía’s shifts, but Rafael still hadn’t woken up by the time it ended. Olivia saw her visible disappointment when she walked into the room to relieve her.

“You can stay, Lucía,” she said. “We can both stay, it might not be long now. You should be here.”

Lucia got to her feet slowly, groaning as she stretched joints that had cramped over the hours. “I have a board meeting in an hour, it’s critical for arts funding next year. I’ll come back as soon as it’s done, but if anything changes  _call me._ ”

“Of course.”

And, of course, the monitors went crazy exactly an hour later.

Olivia jumped and the case file in her lap slid to the ground, spilling papers everywhere. She probably stepped on most of them when she leaned over the bed but none of it mattered because Rafael’s eyelids were fluttering. The hand closest to her twitched. His fingers skittered across the bed, crablike and uncertain, and when she gave him her hand he didn’t have the strength to grip it, just pressed his fingers against hers. His forehead was creased unhappily and his eyes opened, rolled. He sounded like he was choking.

“Get that thing out of him!” she snapped at the sudden influx of nurses.

She couldn’t watch the way he convulsed as they pulled the tube from his throat; the wet, retching sounds that filled the room were painful enough as it was. Instead she focused on their hands until the noises stopped and the heavy gasping breaths were all his own. 

When she looked up again his eyes were darting around the room, unfocused, wide and confused and scared.

“Rafael?” she said. Hesitantly, like he’d be different now, unrecognizable to himself and to her. That was a possibility, the doctors had said, slim but not unknown to happen after trauma like this.

But his attention snapped to her immediately and his face lit up with recognition and so much relief it almost read as childlike.

And that was when the doctor swept in, polite but firm as he asked her to move aside so they could run some basic cognitive and otolaryngological tests and then she could sit with him again but he’d probably fall asleep again quickly at first, just so she knew, as the drugs cycled out of his system, and she shouldn’t expect too much. Olivia backed against the wall but stayed in Rafael’s line of sight. From the way his eyes kept flitting to her even as they bombarded him with all the standard assessment questions she could tell it reassured him to know she hadn’t left him alone, bewildered and surrounded by strangers.

As post-traumatic event assessments went—and she’d been present at her fair share—this one was…bumpy. Rafael was cognizant enough to understand the questions, could nod when they asked if he knew his name and shake his head when they asked if he knew where he was, but he winced when he opened his mouth, clearly in too much pain to speak. The doctors had warned her about that too, said it wasn’t uncommon after extended periods of intubation and not to worry if he had trouble talking or eating for a few days.

But no one had warned Rafael, and he was clearly pissed off. He rolled his eyes at the basic cognitive checks, rolled them again when the doctor said they’d bring him a pencil and paper so he could write down anything he wanted to say, scowled as they took his vitals.

An impatient, caustic smartass who valued talking over breathing. _That_ was her Rafael.

He only calmed down when the doctors left and she sat down again, for a given value of calm that included less frowning and squirming of the variety that indicated he knew he didn’t have the strength to climb out of bed but rolling out of it wasn’t off the table.

 “I can see you planning that escape attempt. Don’t make me pull out the handcuffs,” she said, smiling wider than normal out of sheer relief.

He snorted a little. One corner of his mouth twitched, half a smile, but his lips were dry and cracked and it made him wince again. More carefully he mouthed, _What happened?_

“You were attacked in your apartment. By the men who’d been sending you those death threats you so conveniently forgot to mention.” She kept her tone light; the promised yelling was still definitely in his future, but she’d save it for when he could actually remember it. “You hit your head and lost a lot of blood. It’s been five days. You’re at Mount Sinai. The prognosis is good, Rafa, really good.”

But she’d lost him after _five days—_ the panic that he’d tucked away in front of the doctors was back and he was shaking his head in denial. It was harder to read his lips when the bottom one was trembling like he was on the edge of tears but she managed to decipher: _Not possible—I was just—_

“I know it feels that way. It’s okay to be confused.”

He tried to roll his eyes again but that just made their suspicious shininess more obvious. He looked younger when he was upset. Maybe if he hadn’t, Olivia could have maintained the professional distance that had separated them all these years, given him time to reclaim the dignity that fled when hospital gowns went on and catheters went in and days went missing that would never come back.

Except he did look younger, and lost, vulnerable in a way she’d never seen him even outside the DA’s office that day, and it broke her heart a little. So she sat on the edge of the bed and, running one hand through his now-greasy hair, tried to say with eye contact alone that it was okay. He was loved. He was safe. He stared back, hardly blinking, and after a few minutes passed his breathing evened out and he nodded.

“Rest, Rafael,” she said gently.

As if on command, he passed out again. 

* * *

It felt like someone had jammed a bicycle pump through his temple and used it to inflate his skull.

While their asshole friend else curb-stomped his throat a couple times.

Rafael crawled back to consciousness reluctantly. _Fucking hell_.

He groaned a little.

“About time you woke up, sleeping beauty. Doctors want you out, they need this room for _real_ patients.”

It took a truly heroic amount of energy to open his eyes and turn his head on the pillow, but his mother didn’t look as impressed by the effort as he felt she should.

Then she winked and he would have laughed, if he could have without causing even more pain. He had to settle for a weak smile and a hand stretched in her direction, which she took fast enough and held hard enough that he called bullshit (in his head, at least) on her whole nonchalant act.

“You scared us, mijo. Don’t do that again.”

 _Scared me too,_ he mouthed. There was a pen and notepad on the bedside table that he considered throwing across the room but decided to eye disdainfully instead, since that required moving fewer muscles. He hated everything about hospitals, especially the way they used “creative problem-solving” for basic tasks (Olivia would have told him that what he hated was the inability to complete those basic tasks himself, but it was easier to make it about the hospital).

“You remember that night? The night you went home?”

_A little. Pieces._

He squinted at the ceiling, trying to put those pieces into an order that made sense. He was in his apartment, and his mother’s, and Olivia’s; he was bleeding on the floor, choking against the wall, spilling coffee on the rug; he was sad and sick and in so much danger, and it was all happening at once but he suspected some of it hadn’t happened at all.

 _They were waiting for me._  Fuck _,_ even  _pretending_  to speak hurt. His mother nodded. He tried again. _I remember…Liv. Was Liv here?_

His mother smiled, though it skirted close to the smirk he knew he’d inherited. He wanted to ask why the smirk but one conversation was hard enough to follow; he couldn’t handle tangents too. 

“Yes, your friend Detective Benson was here. All your friends, actually, but her most often.” She paused for a moment, which was strange. His mother rarely stopped for  _air,_ much less to think before she spoke—which, as it turned out, was also genetic. “I didn’t think I’d like her, after all you said, but I do. You should be nicer to her.”

The whole world was confusing right now, but he certainly hadn’t expected that. Rafael aimed for an expression of gentle reproach but suspected he just looked like he was sulking.

 _M_ _amí,_ you _be nice. I’m sick._

“I know, baby,” she said, which he should have hated but didn’t. He blamed the pain and the drugs he could feel poisoning his blood and his brain, even if he wasn’t sure what drugs they were or why they were inside him. Or why the doctors had clearly decided to withhold the ones that would keep his head in one piece.

_It hurts. I don’t like it here. I want to go home._

“I know,” she said again. “Soon. One more round of scans in a few hours, just to be safe. Then you have to keep down liquids and get checked out by a speech therapist. They’ll discharge you after that. Could be tonight, if you behave yourself.”

He frowned, not understanding.

“According to Olivia you got a little combative earlier. You don’t remember that?”

Rafael shook his head, unsure whether he was more uncomfortable with belligerence he didn’t remember or the fact that his mother and his…whatever Olivia was…had reached a first-name basis while he wasn’t around to keep tabs on them. The idea of the two of them in cahoots—especially against him, which they would be—was terrifying. Like she’d read his mind, his mother snorted with laughter and patted his hand.

“Get some more sleep, Rafi. Plenty of time to catch you up later.”

It wasn’t until he was too far gone to talk again that he realized that for all his insistence on going home, he had no idea where that was.

* * *

 Olivia almost missed the phone buzzing against the table. Jesse and Noah were delivering an impassioned explanation of their latest Lego creation, which was supposed to be a spaceship, while Rollins made all the right expressions and exclamations to indicate parental pride in the attempt and avoided saying anything about accuracy of the result. Olivia had one ear out for the timer on the chicken nuggets and it took six rings for the phone to catch her attention. She checked the caller ID, then stood quickly.

“It’s Lucía,” she told Rollins.

“Go ahead, take it. I’ve got them.”

Olivia retreated to her room and closed the door, braced herself against it. There’d been nothing but good news in days but some part of her was still on edge, still expected a sudden bleed in Rafael’s brain or fatal seizure or poor reaction to any of the meds they had him on. They’d been optimistic about Dodds too, right up until he flatlined.

“Is he okay?” she said.

Lucía didn’t care much for pleasantries either. “The doctors like his scans. Once he checks out with this speech therapist they say there’s no reason he needs to stay here. As long as he rests, takes his meds, doesn’t strain his stitches or his head—”

“He’ll hate every bit of that,” Olivia said, sighing with relief.

“Oh, he’s on his best behavior. He’s not sure about much, but he knows he wants to go home.”

Automatically Olivia started to nod, say something generic about how that was good and he’d recover just as well outside of the hospital, but then Lucía’s words really sank in. “Back to his apartment? Are you sure that’s a good idea, so soon after he was attacked there? There could be flashbacks, panic attacks—”

Not to mention the floor was still a mess, stained despite a very expensive deep clean, and would probably need to be renovated before the place was livable again.

“No, he’s not going back there,” Lucía agreed. “He shouldn’t be on his own at first. He could stay with me but I’d have to hire someone for while I’m work.”

“You shouldn’t have to do that—the expense, the stress for you—”

“Well, it’s not like he has a lot of friends, you know. People he really trusts.”

 _He has me,_ Olivia thought.

“I was hoping you’d say that,” Lucía said cheerfully, and Olivia realized with horror that she’d done more than think it. But before she could take it back or make some excuse about how she’d love to help, really, but she had a lot of work to make up at the precinct (she didn’t) and Noah only liked familiar faces (he knew Uncle Rafa) and she wasn’t sure Rafael would want to stay with her anyway (that one was true, at least), Lucía was rambling on about Olivia’s guest room, how Lucy would barely have to check on him at all and he wouldn’t be in the way or obnoxious, his mother would make sure of it. She sounded so grateful that Olivia couldn’t bring herself to change her mind.

And it did start to make sense, the more she thought about it. The space, the schedule, the supervision…she had them all. Lucía didn’t.

_Don’t be a coward, remember?_

“Yes,” she said, when she realized Lucía  had stopped talking and was probably expecting a response. “You’re right, that’s the right thing to do. So if you’ll just…just let me know when he’s being discharged, I’ll come get him?”

“You’re an angel, Olivia.” For the first time all conversation, Lucía  sounded perfectly, almost painfully, sincere.

“He’s one of my closest friends. I’m happy to do it,” Olivia said. That was sincere too; it was also bullshit, because he was more than that and _happy_ wasn’t the most accurate word to describe how she felt about the situation she’d backed herself into, but for once Lucía had the tact not to point that out.

After she hung up, Olivia made sure none of her mental turmoil showed on her face. She relaxed her shoulders. She smiled. And then she swept back into the living room, to her son.

“Noah, guess what? Uncle Rafa’s coming over later. He’s going to stay with us for a little bit. Isn’t that exciting?”

Rollins’ expression was priceless. 

* * *

 

It took Rafael twenty minutes to put on the sweatpants and Harvard sweatshirt his mother had brought him. By the time he was dressed he was trembling and a little woozy and had to collapse back onto the bed until his head stopped spinning. His mother had gone to the hospital pharmacy to fill his prescriptions—including Vicodin, thank God—and he was determined to be ready to go as soon as she got back. And it felt good to get out of that hospital gown and cover up his arms. The doctors said his sutures were holding and the damage was healing well but the stitches gave him a distinctly Frankenstein’s monster look that he preferred not to confront directly.

The sweatpants slipped on his hips a little. He’d avoided looking in the mirror in the bathroom when he finally made it there under his own power, but he imagined he looked about as good as he felt. There was nothing like a near-death experience and subsequent coma to really drive home the point that human bodies fell apart at the slightest provocation and sometimes for no reason at all. He couldn’t decide whether that made him want to renew or cancel his gym membership.

A soft rap on the door made him sit up, opening his mouth to ask his mother if they could get the hell out of here already—

“Hey,” Olivia said. “You ready to go home?”

 _Of course, you dumbass,_ he thought. _That’s where it is._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'd just like to point out that i could end this here and it would not be the WORST. a little cliff-hangery but not the worst. this story COULD be three chapters.
> 
> it's not, but it could be. do i get partial credit?


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's bath time (you're welcome) 
> 
> but not sexy bath time (sorry)

They were barely in the door before Noah barreled in from the living room, grinning wide and shouting, “Uncle Rafa!”

Then he stopped, tilted his head, and repeated more cautiously, “Uncle Rafa?”

Olivia had her hand on Rafael’s shoulder, steadying him, and she felt him tense as he tried to stand up straighter and smooth his grimace into a smile.

“Hey, Noah,” he rasped. They were the first words he’d spoken since the hospital and, hearing them scrape over his inflamed windpipe and swollen vocal chords, just because he didn’t want her son to worry, Olivia wondered if there was anything in the world she wouldn’t do to protect these two. She couldn’t think of a thing.

Noah was still eyeing them anxiously, and it struck her that he’d never seen Rafael with a hair out of place or even wearing jeans, and here he was, swaying in the doorway, wearing mismatched sweats and in desperate need of a shower. No wonder Noah was confused.

“Uncle Rafa’s not feeling so great,” she explained. “He’s going to take a nap and then you can tell him all about your field trip, okay?”

“Okay,” Noah said. Then, abruptly, he threw his arms around Rafael’s waist. “Feel better!”

By the time Rafael had processed the hug Noah had scampered back down the hall to Lucy and his Spongebob episode. Olivia couldn’t help smiling at the baffled expression on his face, but hid it quickly; even stoned off his ass Rafael had a prickly side, rolling his eyes when she’d tried to help him with his seatbelt and shooting her weak glares when she steered him away from walking into walls. Hyperaware that his pride had taken a beating already, she could at least try not to wound it even more.

“Come on, champ,” she said, throwing an arm around his shoulder. “Let’s get you that nap.”

She’d stopped in the CVS by the hospital and picked up the basics since he didn’t have anything with him, but they’d barely made it into the guest room when she realized he wouldn't need to shower or shave just yet. It was all she could do to guide his fall as he tripped to the bed and collapsed like a dead weight. Every muscle had gone lax and heavy, like he was trying to sink straight through the mattress; he was going to have trouble breathing, face-down like that.

Sighing, she pushed and hauled and rearranged unhelpful limbs until Rafael was in the center of the bed, on his side with a pillow tucked under his head. She knew the motions from all Noah’s colds, bouts with the flu, and that stomach virus that had kept him miserable for days, but the execution was different when the body was decades older and a hundred thirty pounds heavier. Then she put a glass of water and a Vicodin on the bedside table for when he woke up.

And then, out of helpful things to do, she sat on the edge of the bed and watched him breathe, a little shallow but on his own, and thought about how she’d told his mother the truth after all—she  _was_ happy to have him here. A lot of other things too, but she’d think about those later. Right now happy was enough.

 

* * *

Rafael slept for the next sixteen hours, woke up just long enough to stumble to the bathroom, down the painkillers, and have two sips of tomato soup, then went back to sleep for another five. It was late Sunday afternoon before Olivia heard a soft series of thumps from the guest room and found him braced in the doorway to the bathroom, staring at the shower like he’d never seen one before.

“Hey, Rafa,” she said, keeping it light and casual. “How’s it going?”

He didn’t seem surprised to see her, or curious about where he was, or aware of anything beyond whatever thought was foremost on his mind, which presumably had something to do with why he was in the bathroom. Slowly, he grated out, “I’m a mess.”

“Don’t worry about that. You just got out of the hospital, it’ll take time—”

He shook his head. “I’m a  _mess._ Shower.”

In the few seconds it took for Olivia to think about that he’d already started weaving more noticeably; she helped him sit down on the closed toilet seat before his legs gave out. There was no way he’d be able to stand long enough to take a shower, but she knew Rafael when he was being stubborn and she could tell he wasn’t about to let himself be coaxed back to bed. The doctors had said he might fixate like this on things that seemed irrelevant because his brain understood simple thoughts, basic wants and needs, but not complex concepts yet.

Trust Rafael to pick his physical appearance as his first fixation.

“Liv,” he said, looking up at her plaintively. Forcing the words out still caused him visible pain. “I feel terrible.”

She sighed and tapped her upper lip, trying to figure this out. It was really something she should have thought of earlier but once he’d woken up things had happened so  _fast._

_“_ Okay,” she said. “I understand. But it’s a lot of standing up, and I don’t want you to fall down and hurt yourself. And you’re not supposed to get these too wet, remember?” She pulled up the sleeve of his sweatshirt and touched the skin next to the long row of stitches. He frowned at them like they’d appeared from nowhere solely to inconvenience him. “So what we’re going to do is…a bath. How’s that?”

Rafael looked skeptical at first, but then he nodded, and immediately started trying to squirm his way out of the sweatshirt. He was uncoordinated and clumsy and she pulled his hands away before he could injure himself trying to be helpful.

“No, no, no,” she said. “You just stay put. Let me help. Is that okay?”

He nodded again and mouthed  _thank you,_ then obediently stayed still while she drew the bathwater. The tub was full and the temperature was right long before she’d come to terms with the fact that she was about to take his clothes off for the first time in circumstances that couldn’t be further from the ones she’d envisioned—

Well, far more often than she’d ever admit to him, anyway. His ego didn’t need the encouragement. 

She wondered if he was with it enough to realize the same thing. From the zoned-out way he was staring at the wall she suspected not. Hoped not, really. No-filter, all-instinct Rafael wasn’t the one she needed to have that long overdue conversation with, he definitely wasn’t capable of consent, and while he was honest to the point of hilarity, that vulnerability was heartbreaking more than anything else. It so obviously wasn’t his choice.

Idly she hoped he wouldn’t hate her, later on, for seeing him like this. If they were lucky he wouldn’t remember it at all.

But that was all in the future. Now it was her job to set firm boundaries because he didn’t have any of his own.

“Ready? Keep your arms loose, I don’t want to pull any stitches,” she said, and worked the sweatshirt over his head. He managed the sweatpants himself, barely, then together they got him into the water. Very careful to keep her eyes _above_ the waist, she laid his arms along the sides of the tub and pressed them down gently. “These stay here, okay? Keep them as dry as you can.”

He gave her the same dry look he usually reserved for suspects who were bad liars, the one that said, _You’re really wasting my time with this shit?_

Olivia couldn’t help laughing. “Meaning you’re not at the top of your game but you’re also not my five-year-old son so I should stop treating you like him, is that it?”

Guileless like the kid he insisted he wasn’t, Rafael nodded, squeezed her hand and rasped, “Liv. It’s still me.”

“I know,” she said. It came out softer, fonder than she’d meant it to. “No disrespect intended, Counselor, I assure you,” she added, very seriously.

He looked like he was genuinely contemplating sticking his tongue out but instead heaved a put-upon sigh and closed his eyes, relaxing in the warm water.

“Don’t you dare go to sleep,” she warned him. “I said I’d _help,_ not do everything for you. And I have no idea how to do this except the old-fashioned way, which is going to involve a lot of shampoo in your eyes unless you help me too.”

She held an empty cup from the kitchen up in one hand and the CVS bottle of shampoo in the other to demonstrate just how old-fashioned the old-fashioned way was. Rafael took long seconds to do the math before he looked at her incredulously, visibly tried and failed to come up with a plan B, and finally scrunched his eyes closed and tipped his head back, braced like he was expecting ice instead of the warm water already in the tub.

“God, you’re such a baby,” Olivia muttered, and poured the first cup over his head. His hair was so dark with grease it looked wet already; it took four cups to see any difference.

And sure, they came back to her, all those noble thoughts about being careful and clinical while he was in this psychologically and physically vulnerable state, but the truth was Rafael was right, he _was_ still himself, and when her nose itched and she looked down at her shampoo-covered hands she realized how ridiculous this was. She was a grown woman kneeling on the bathroom floor handwashing her best friend’s hair, days after he’d been framed for his own suicide, and she hadn’t kidnapped him from the hospital exactly but he’d sure never been asked how he felt about staying with her, and also she was in love with him and he was high as a kite and totally naked, and she was so worried she’d take advantage of him in _some_ way that she hadn’t looked away from his face once since she’d tipped the first cup of water over his head. It was a good face. A really good face.

Which was creepy in its own way, wasn’t it? This was really a no-win situation, and it would have been intolerable if it hadn’t been so absurd.

“Hey, wake up. It’s your turn to be helpful.” He opened his eyes. “My nose itches.”

He stared at her blankly until she gestured to both hands, covered in bubbles; then the message got through and he scratched the tip of her nose. It gave her a chance to appreciate her handiwork so far. His hair had gone from grease-dark to white with bubbles, a sort of founding-fathers wig-type situation, and she had to resist the impulse to add them to his beard as well. Give him a mohawk, maybe. Silly as this was, she had _some_ maturity left.

She finger-combed his hair away from his face, scratched his scalp and smiled when he hummed happily and turned his head toward her. Finally she sat back on her heels.

“Very handsome,” she decided. “Where’s my phone? This look needs commemorating—”

His hand shot out and wrapped around her wrist, a silently eloquent _Don’t you dare._

“Fine, fine,” she said, faking a disappointed sigh. “Would have been great blackmail material.”

In answer Rafael picked up the cup and handed it back to her pointedly. She cast a quick glance at his forearms; the stitches were still dry. He’d remembered that, at least, or maybe forgotten to forget it.

“Destroying the evidence, Counselor?”

He dipped the tips of his fingers in the water and flicked the droplets at her face, a remonstrance if she’d ever seen one, but a corner of his mouth was turned up.

“Message received, you tyrant.”

To rinse out the shampoo she flipped on the sink and transferred cups of clean water from there to the bath. She supported Rafael’s head with a hand behind his neck this time; he’d started to wince bracing it himself and she’d realized that the angle must have been hell on his throat. The shampoo drained from his hair to the bathwater and finally she stopped seeing bubbles among the dark strands. With only a little reluctance, she lifted her hands away and stood up.

He must have fallen asleep again, because he startled when she tossed a dry washcloth on his chest.

“This part’s on you,” she said. “I’m going to grab you some clothes and heat up that soup you never finished. Keep those stitches dry and try not to drown, okay?”

Before she left the bathroom she yanked the shower curtain around the tub so that all she could see was his silhouette. The boxers and white t-shirt she dropped on the toilet seat (CVS hadn’t had anything else, and she hadn’t wanted to leave him alone long enough to do better), along with a towel, a toothbrush, and toothpaste. The soup went in the microwave, then on the bedside table, more water and more Vicodin beside it.

When she came back to check on him—that drowning in the bath crack seemed less funny the longer the silence from the bathroom stretched—Rafael was standing at the sink, staring at himself in the mirror and patting the stubble on his face forlornly. He’d barely dried off at all, his hair stuck up in a hundred directions, he had toothpaste smeared at the corner of his mouth, and his shirt was on backwards, but he’d tried so hard and she could see the toll the effort had taken.

“Come on,” she said, thumbing the toothpaste off his lips and guiding him away from the mirror. “That’s enough for now.”

He went right for the pills, then made a face at the soup and tugged at the comforter instead, crawling under the covers and pulling them up over his shoulders. He was shivering a little—cold, dampness, exhaustion, probably a combination of all three.

Olivia sighed. “Just a few more minutes. I need to clean those stitches, then you can sleep again.”

Reluctantly he extricated his arms from beneath the blankets and held them out to her.

“It would be easier if you sat up. You really should eat something too.”

He shook his head, stubborn again, and it didn’t matter really and he’d already done so much and looked so tired so she let him win.

“Okay. I’ll take care of it, you just get some more rest.”

Because it was habit, and because it felt right, and because the odds of him remembering it were so low, she pressed a kiss to his forehead. He blinked up at her blearily through half-mast eyelids and she expected him to already be asleep by the time she got back with the warm washcloth and soap the doctor had recommended, but he’d somehow clung to consciousness. Like he’d been waiting for her. He relaxed when she sat down again.

“You look worried. You know you’re safe, don’t you? Nothing will happen to you here, I won’t let it.”

Right arm first—light dabbing around the black threads, no pressure on them, just a little soap and water on the surrounding area. They were healing well. His skin was warm but not hot in a way that could have meant infection.

He wound the fingers of his free hand through hers. _I know._ Then, looking down at his arm, “Funny. Feeling torn apart a lot lately. Just…you can see it now.”

That really wasn’t funny, but he didn’t seem upset about it—bemused, if anything.

“You’ll heal faster than you think.” She moved to the left arm. It made holding hands more awkward but neither of them let go. This wasn’t the time for this conversation, but…he’d brought it up, hadn’t he? “I wish you’d let me see it before, you know. How you were feeling. I might not have been able to do much, but I could have…I don’t know, I could have at least been there. You didn’t have to be alone.”

“I did.”

“Why?”

Rafael frowned and stared at the ceiling; clearly it was such an obvious truth to him that he’d never tried to explain it. They were also now firmly in the realm of the complex concepts that the doctors had warned he’d have trouble with at first.

“He was,” he said finally, simply.

Olivia knew who he meant from tone alone. “Drew. Drew was alone and in pain, so you thought you had to be too.”

Rafael shrugged, not disagreeing.

“You know that’s not how it works. You’ve argued that case, Rafa. Just because both parties suffer doesn’t mean they’re equal, or that they should be.”

He nodded; he _knew_. But she could see he didn’t _believe_ it, in that gut-instinct place he inhabited now where emotions trumped logic. Fairness and justice and all the intellectual distinctions that made sense in courtrooms didn’t mean much there.

“Is that why you resigned? Gave up everything because you thought you hadn’t suffered enough yet?”

“I…” He trailed off, seemed confused. If that had been part of his motivation it had been subconscious. That was a relief—there was a point in that line of thinking about balance and equality where he became a danger to himself. He wasn’t there.

The instant the Vicodin kicked in was also the instant he lost the train of thought entirely; she was impressed he’d managed to hold on to it for even this long, for so many words. It happened as she was tucking his arms back under the blankets, when he grabbed her wrist before she could sit back and slur-sighed, “I missed you so much.”

“I didn’t go anywhere,” she said. “And I’m not going to, either.”

She’d caught a few mood swings already in his very short time awake. Catlike contentment, childlike frustration, condescension truly not compatible with his current mental state. Small ones, invisible to anyone else, but she knew him better than most and his eyes were more expressive when he was silent. Before they closed again she saw something new: relief.

 

* * *

 

The trouble with hallucinations this vivid was that Rafael had no idea what parts were actually real. Some of them had to be. His body, and his wandering mind with it, had to be  _somewhere_. That or the afterlife was a lot more prosaic than Catholic school had led him to believe.

He was pretty sure he wasn’t in his apartment. He’d been attacked there, he was sure about that, but too many things had happened since for him to still be lying on the kitchen floor in that pool of blood. Even if hallucination-time passed much faster than real time he’d have bled out by now.

Odds seemed much higher that he was still in the hospital. Over and over again he woke up with that fucking breathing tube down his throat. Once or twice Olivia was there, holding his hand, telling him to stay calm, but far more often he was alone, no one came, and he tried to claw the thing out himself, choking and panicking and eventually crying because the pain was just too much to bear. Doctors who looked and sounded like his father loomed over him, ordered him to stop making such a scene, to leave the tube in place while better, smarter men made the decisions, for God’s sake why did he insist on behaving like such a  _child_?

Sometimes he was in other rooms, in the middle of a blood transfusion that seemed to take years. Bags of it hung all around him, emptying slowly, while surgeons bent over his arms and sewed him back together. That pain felt very far away, until it didn’t—one of the doctors or nurses, or maybe all of them at once, recognized him from the news and their concern turned to hatred faster than he could process, and they yanked the stitches out viciously and took the bags of blood away— _we’ll use this to save someone who deserves it, not a monster like you—_ leaving him alone with the pain and the wounds dripping steadily and the gasps that filled the air until they went shallow and stopped.

Other times he floated somewhere soft and dark. He didn’t mind it there; there was no pain, no body broken or otherwise, no sensory overload—no senses at all. He couldn’t see them but he knew that somewhere close by his mother and Olivia sat next to a man in a hospital bed who could have been a skinnier, paler version of himself. He felt bad for the guy, whoever it was. He looked like shit.

His favorite hallucinations were the ones where he’d moved in with Olivia. They seemed least likely to be true, were more fragmented than the long, uninterrupted periods of isolation and pain, but he clung to them despite the weak protests in the back of his mind from whatever was left of his dignity. He woke up in her guest room, drifted deliriously for long stretches of time, drank the soup or smoothies or water on the bedside table, fell back asleep. He wasn’t always in bed, though. He hallucinated curling up on the couch under a blanket, watching Spongebob with Noah; stirring noodles or sauces on the stove with the intense focus and seriousness of someone diffusing a bomb or performing heart surgery; bracing himself in the shower a few times and taking a bath once, which couldn’t possibly be true. Sometimes Olivia was there and sometimes she wasn’t, but when she wasn’t he knew that she was close by. 

In a way it didn’t matter. Wherever he was, his attackers found him. He saw them in every doorway, in every shadow, out of the corner of his eye. No faces, void-shapes, dark and vague and threatening—but he knew it was them. They’d come back to finish the job, to make him pay for Munson or Drew or something he didn’t remember doing or hadn’t done yet. He didn’t know, it didn’t make a difference. The doctors who looked like his father laughed and left him alone with them; Olivia held him in her arms, stroking his hair and promising him he was safe while he shivered uncontrollably. 

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt safe. But telling her that would have made her sad, and he never wanted to make her sad again. He’d hurt her too much already.

Then the drugs started to wear off, and every time he felt lucid enough to be certain of reality he was…still in Olivia’s apartment. He’d been so sure that was part of the hallucinations but gradually had no choice but to accept that it had actually happened. Was still happening. It still made no sense, but…

“What am I doing here?” he asked one day. He was sitting up in bed, wearing a sweatshirt and sweatpants he’d never seen in his life. The world felt cushioned and soft and he hoped he’d never felt sharp again, because clarity meant pain and he was so tired of being in pain.

“Getting better,” Olivia said without looking up. She was next to him on the bed, on top of the blankets, with her back against the headboard and her legs stretched out, flipping through a case file.

“Hmmm.”

She gave him a questioning glance. “Why? Somewhere else you want to be?”

He didn’t even need to think about the answer. “No.”

“Then stop worrying about it.”

“Hmmm,” he said again, and did.

 

* * *

 

He wasn’t  _proud_ of it, but when he did start to feel stronger he accidentally-on-purpose didn’t exactly volunteer that information to Olivia. It wasn’t lying; it still alarmed him sometimes, how unreliable his mind and body had both become.

“You cleaned the carpet,” he said one morning, on his way to the kitchen for the one cup of coffee she allowed him each day. He was so much more careful with his coffee now, remembered that dark stain creeping through the white fibers.

Olivia handed him his mug and sipped from her own. “What are you talking about?”

“I dropped a whole cup of coffee, right there,” he reminded her, pointing at the spot. 

“Rafael…you’ve never dropped a cup of coffee in your life. Definitely not in my living room.”

He could see it so clearly but the more he insisted the more she’d worry and besides, he trusted Olivia far more than he trusted himself these days. So he just shrugged. “Must have been a dream.”

But it did make him wonder. How many other false memories had his mind filed away between the real ones? Or, potentially worse, how many real memories had he lost that he’d never know about? No point in worrying since there was nothing he could do about it either way, but the uncertainties still irritated him, like an itch inside his brain that he’d never be able to scratch.

Early on he’d also fainted a few times—nothing dramatic or painful, just head rushes into blackness when he stood up too quickly, waking up two seconds later back in bed or on the couch. Olivia cared more about those episodes more than he did; coming on the heels of an extended full-body shutdown, a dizzy spell here or there hardly even registered.

Eventually there was no denying that he needed help less than he had. He stopped sleeping fourteen or fifteen hour nights. His mother dropped a bag of his things—jeans and sweaters, mostly—off one day and his relief to get out of those stupid sweatpants kept him in a good mood all afternoon. His head was clear more often, for longer periods of time. He could play with Noah properly now, not just pass out in his general vicinity, and sometimes Olivia helped him make dinner instead of the other way around, using his abuelita’s favorite recipes for the first time in years.

It was the delicate things like shaving and cleaning his stitches that he let Olivia help with past the point he could have done them himself. At a cost—the sight of any blade made his heartrate skyrocket so fast he got dizzy, and his stitches made him want to crawl out of his skin—but he _could_ have done them, like he _could_ have gone back to his own apartment or his mother’s as soon as he could stand up.

But something had changed, and the things he would have done didn’t make sense anymore. The awareness of near-death had seared permanently on his mind like the scars that would mark his arms forever, and the idea of pushing Olivia away again was unbearable. She was the only thing that _did_ make sense.

Besides, she was right. There was nowhere else he’d rather be.

Until she knocked on the guest room door one night after putting Noah to bed.

“Hey,” she said, smiling. “Can I come in?”

Smiling back was an automatic reflex by this point. “Your house.”

“Ah, mi casa, su casa, all that.”

She sat down at the end of the bed and looked at him for a long, silent minute, then decided, “You look better. Less…pallid.”

“Contrary to recent behavior, I’m not actually the minor character in a Bronte novel who faints for no reason and dies of tuberculosis in the first chapter.”

“You can take a little heat, huh?” she said, teasing but with an undercurrent of some emotion he couldn’t identify until it was too late. “Good. Because I’m about to yell at you—quietly, because Noah’s asleep—for being a selfish asshole who walked away like it was for good without thinking about anyone but yourself. And I’ve also got some thoughts on the fact that if _every single star_ hadn’t aligned in your favor you’d be dead now, one of those undignified New York deaths where nobody finds your body until it’s decomposing because you isolated yourself so completely. ”

And just like that, the peaceful holding pattern that had characterized his recovery was over.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> no one bleeds even a little, has anything ever been more off-brand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: struggles to write something even vaguely sex-adjacent for literal weeks  
> y'all: just crankin out awesome smut like it aint no thang??
> 
> i love everyone in this bar
> 
> (the bar is forlini's)

_I could really hurt him._

It popped into her head like a thought bubble out of one of Noah’s cartoons.

_I could make him feel like I did. Abandoned, alone, used._

Was this how perps felt when they were about to commit their crimes? There was a sickeningly sweet pleasure to it—she was in control, and that meant she was safe. He couldn’t cause her pain again, that power was with her now.

Then she looked at him, in her guestroom reading a book he’d borrowed from her shelves and wearing a t-shirt and pajama bottoms she’d bought him, and knew that she’d never forgive herself if she hurt him, even if it was only in the thoughtless way he’d hurt her. 

But equally unbearable was the idea of saying nothing, of going on as they had been. Playing house like children with no concept of context or consequences. Using their unconventional situation as an excuse to skip every step that made a relationship real and going straight to part that was comfortable, where he moved in, cooked dinner for them like a family, looked after Noah, and inhabited her space like he belonged there. It was nearly perfect, but it was fake. And that made it intolerable.

“Would I have ever heard from you again, if you hadn’t been attacked?” she asked, even though she hadn’t meant to start there.

“Yes,” Rafael said immediately. Then he hesitated in a way that made the next question clear.

“When?”

He frowned, tilted his head. “I don’t know. Does it matter?”

The question wasn’t defensive, only curious. Olivia thought about it for a moment. What-ifs and might-have-beens…she’d learned a long time ago that they were unhelpful at best and downright dangerous at worst. She shrugged and replied honestly.

“No, it doesn’t matter. But it matters that you didn’t tell me about the threats, it matters that you didn’t trust me _again_ , and it’s a big fucking deal that you put me in the same category as the job—something that was destroying you, something you had to walk away from to survive. Something you _could_ walk away from, just like that. I thought we meant more to each other.”

“We did. We  _do_. I didn’t mean it like that.” He sounded so calm but she could see that he was alarmed—it was in his eyes, in the way he was leaning forward like he wanted to touch her but wasn’t sure she’d allow it.

“Were you not listening to yourself? Talking about how I brought color into your life, opened your heart, turned you into me, whatever the hell  _that_ means, and now you had to  _move on_?” Olivia hated that her voice had started to shake and put all her willpower into steadying it as she finished quietly, “Like you’d gotten everything you needed from me, so now I was expendable.”

His eyes went wide and he shook his head disbelievingly. “You, expendable? There’s nothing further from the truth.”

“Forgive me for doubting that, with the way you left.” She didn’t bother to check the sarcasm. If she stayed bitter, stayed angry, she wouldn’t cry and, even though he’d seen her in tears before, she refused to let him see her in tears over _him_. “Not just physically. Emotionally, in every way that mattered, you shoved me away and then vanished. You were gone, even before the day you said goodbye.”

“I wasn’t thinking clearly. I didn’t know what would happen after the trial, I only knew that my life was full of so much pain it was making me crazy, and I had to get away from it. And the two most important things in my life were my work and you. So I was a coward, and I ran from both. The job—screw the job, but you…of course I would have come back for you.”

“Then you should have said that, instead of some bullshit about color theory.” It was cold bordering on cruel, but once the words started to spill out they wouldn’t stop. “But even if you had been less enamored of your own misery at the expense of everyone around you, you hid those death threats deliberately, Rafael. Frequent, credible, _recent_ death threats and you didn’t tell me or the squad or the DA’s office because your security detail would not have been pulled cold if you had.”

“It’s not like it was new news, Liv,” he shot back. “I’ve been getting death threats for years and there was nothing about these that indicated they were any more imminent than the ones before. I didn’t want anyone to worry. Especially you.”

“That wasn’t your call to make! And I hate to break it to you, but I’ve worried a lot more about you recently than I would have worried about you then if you’d just told me and let me catch the bastards before they almost killed you.”

The brief flame of defiance that had lit in self-defense guttered out just as quickly. He sighed and spread his hands, helpless and apologetic. “You’re right. I was wrong, I should have told you. You deserved honesty. You always deserve honesty.”

“So be honest with me,” Olivia said, riding the wave of righteous indignation she’d been building the whole conversation.

“About what?”

“Pick something,” she said through gritted teeth.

There was an odd silence and then, with a crooked smile and so easily, like he’d said it a thousand times before, Rafael said, “Fine, here’s one, I love you. Honest enough?”

Olivia had the sudden sense that the room had tilted sideways; she half-expected pillows and furniture and knick-knacks to go tumbling by and crash into the walls. She blinked but everything was still in the same place including Rafael, who sat cross-legged just out of arm’s reach wearing his best court poker-face but somehow less tense than he had been a few seconds ago. Like the truth was a weight off his shoulders, a cliché she hated even as she admitted its accuracy. After so many years of angst and uncertainty, circling each other warily and then companionably and then longingly, waiting for the right moment, cycling through less significant significant others—had it really been that easy all along? 

And of course she recognized a  _Redirect, Your Honor?_  when she heard one, Rafael always had been an expert at pivoting from lines of questioning he found…unproductive, but just because it was also a shock tactic to stop her from yelling at him didn’t mean it wasn’t true. She knew, bone-deep, that it was.

Though it was a  _great_  shock tactic, because all that carefully-stoked anger had been doused in a cold rush of surprise and she couldn’t have gotten it back if she wanted to.

“That’s more honest than I expected,” she managed at last.

“You don’t seem very surprised,” he said, aiming for amused and landing somewhere near bemused instead.

“I’m not,” she said, realizing that was true. 

“You knew.”

Olivia nodded. There’d been no guarantee they’d ever get _here_ , but she’d known she wasn’t alone in her feelings for as long as she’d known she had them herself. Her read on what people left unsaid had only gotten more reliable over the years and she knew Rafael a hell of a lot better than she knew the endless cycle of perps and vics that passed through SVU. They had tics and tells; Rafael had his too. It wasn’t so much the things he did—bringing her lattes on hard days or her favorite takeout on late nights, dropping everything from rare dates to opera tickets whenever he sensed she needed help or even just company—as the unthinking way he did them. He never asked and never condescended, just took care of her needs like they were his own. He was more energetic with her too, less worn out by the world, sometimes even happy. And sure he was still an asshole who pushed her harder than anyone on the squad, but his abrasive personality was tempered by soft looks and moments of something she’d call gentleness in anyone else.

Rafael was clearly under the impression that he’d been very subtle, though. “Since when? Did I say something after the attack? God, was it embarrassing?”

She couldn’t help herself. He wasn’t off the hook yet. “You don’t remember?”

“I remember you sat right there—” he pointed at the other side of the bed “—and said you weren’t going anywhere. That’s it. Please, Liv, put me out of my misery here.”

“About how you acted when you were stoned off your ass or about the other thing?”

“The other thing,” he said, enunciating every word like it was its own sentence. His new nervous tic was to rub the skin over where his stitches were and he was doing it now, unconsciously running his right hand up and down his left forearm. He said they itched sometimes and gentle pressure helped. She looked at him and at the tiny black threads that had barely held him together for the scariest hours of her life not even a week ago and suddenly knew that neither of them was in control, really, and that meant that maybe they’d be okay.

“You’re a smart guy, Rafael,” she said, lifting his hand away from his arm to hold it in hers. “You’ve got to know I love you too.”

“I don’t know  _everything_ ,” he admitted grudgingly. He was trying to feign nonchalance, but his eyes had gone soft and happy. It was sappy as hell and she’d tease him about it one day, but she’d done enough teasing for the moment.

“I’ll remember you said that for future arguments,” she said. “But right now I’m going to I kiss you. You ready?”

She’d missed that smirk more than she’d ever admit. “Liv, I’ve been ready. You’re the one who had to catch up.”

“I think I liked you better when you couldn’t talk,” she said, leaning forward, and made sure of just that.

She wondered if he could taste the embers of anger on her lips the way she could taste the apologies on his. _I’m sorry, I love you, never again_ , he was saying, using kisses and fingers tangled in her hair instead of words. He never had liked to dwell on his mistakes if he could do something to rectify them instead. This was it, she realized— _this_ was their conversation.

In her mind their first time had always been rushed and desperate, in a moment of heightened emotion or at the end of a drunken night. Something they could shy away from after, call a mistake the next day. Instead Rafael drew her down on the bed slowly, deliberately, and they lay facing each other, trading kisses and sharing breaths almost lazily. His eyes were bright and hot on her face.

“You don’t have to memorize me,” she said, even as she took note of the stubble on his jaw, the silver in his hair. “I told you, I’m not going anywhere.”

“You’ll have to forgive me for appreciating the view. I didn’t think I would ever get this.” He kissed her again, deep and lingering, and then admitted like a secret, “I was such an idiot, I almost lost you.”

“ _You_ almost lost _me_?”

“The way I left, the callousness of it…”

She didn’t say it was okay, it was all in the past, because it wasn’t, but for the first time she truly believed that it could be.

“Sweet as that is, I came a lot closer to losing you,” she pointed out. He was stroking the line of her jaw with a thumb, and when she wrapped her fingers around his wrist they brushed against the stitches on his arm, as if to prove her point.

Rafael twitched a little, frowning at the black lines on his skin. They looked better than they had—he could have them out in another week or so—but there was no denying that he’d never look the same. He’d have scars, ones she could see and ones she couldn’t.

“We fall apart so easily,” he said, like it was a thought he’d had before.

“We heal too. And we heal stronger.”

She wanted to give him more than the kind of platitude she’d give any victim, so as she kissed him again she slipped her hand under his t-shirt and up his back, pressing her body the length of his. When she ran her fingers back down his spine she dug her nails in and scratched just enough that he’d really feel it.

Rafael hissed and twitched again—a good twitch this time.

It was like a switch had flipped after that. He was hungry for this, for her, in a way that she certainly wasn’t going to complain about when she wanted it just as badly but hadn’t expected from a man who had a tendency to pass out whenever he stood up as recently as yesterday. Now his hands moved over her body like he was trying to crawl out of his skin and into hers. Within a few minutes their shirts were…somewhere, and she had to stop him long enough to turn off the lights and get under the sheets “because if my son walks in here and we scar him for life then God help you.”

“We’ll just have to get creative about privacy next time, then. How do you feel about shower sex?”

Olivia laughed and he grinned back, a little wolfishly, then rolled her onto her back. She could see the top of his head as he kissed his way down her stomach; when he disappeared under the covers entirely she fixed her eyes on the ceiling instead. There was a breath of laughter on her hip as he realized that she wasn’t wearing underwear under her sweatpants.

“Oh, like you’ve never forgotten laundry day until it’s too late,” she muttered—though he probably hadn’t—and after that she was too busy alternating between soft curses and his name exhaled one syllable at a time to defend herself any more. Either he’d been getting a lot more practice at this lately than she’d assumed or he was naturally _very_ gifted.

It was also possible she was much closer than she’d thought, worked up by the argument and finally getting to touch him when he knew what was happening, but when she tilted her hips for the extra pressure that would push her over the edge he pinned them with his free hand and nipped the inside of her thigh in silent—but very clear—reproach: _this one’s mine_.

Following orders in bed was very much not her style and she suspected giving them wasn’t his, but she understood it, the post-traumatic need to be in control of _something._ To keep still she twisted fistfuls of the sheets in both hands, hoping that the sound she made registered as a disgruntled groan and not the moan it really was. Right before all her good intentions and the remains of her sanity disappeared completely, he did something unholy with the point of his tongue at the same time that the fingers inside her moved to press up firmly at the perfect angle. Shivers radiated up her spine and there it was, that was it—

Rafael’s mouth was shining and slick when he emerged from under the blankets, hair so mussed she couldn’t help laughing.

“Jesus, Rafa,” she said, still breathless. “You should add that to your resume, it’s a hell of a skill set.”

“Need to put in more hours before I can claim advanced proficiency,” he said, licking his lips and then kissing her, which was almost enough to derail her train of thought entirely.

“I fully support you in all aspects of your professional growth,” she informed him very seriously. “And speaking of growth—”

“Oh, you _didn’t._ ” His eye-roll was one for the ages, followed by a look of such disappointment in her that she had to bite her lip to keep from collapsing into giggles. “This is how it is with you? Puns? Nope, can’t do it, I’m out—”

As he pretended to pull away she leaned in for another kiss, using the distraction of it to push him onto his back, and before he could do more than blink she was straddling him with her hands planted firmly on either side of his head. There was a moment of stillness and charged silence as she stared down into his dilated eyes, while his smile faded into something so intense it might have made her nervous if she hadn’t felt the same way. He looked like he’d do anything in the world for her. _Me too,_ she thought, but he already knew that and besides—there were other ways of saying it.

Her only warning was a smirk; then she adjusted her position and rolled her hips down hard. It was enough to draw a gasp from her and a much stronger reaction from him, as his eyes flew wide and for a worrying second he sounded like he was choking.

“ _Christ,_ Liv—”

The next minutes were a blur of motion and gasps and sweat as she sank down onto him and set a slow, gentle pace. Part of that was a desire to get him back for the way he’d teased her earlier; part was to make sure she didn’t push him too hard too fast. There was a moment when his eyes rolled and she wondered if they should have waited—after years, what was another few days? Fucking him back into the hospital would be a _really_ inauspicious start to this new phase of their relationship.

Judging by the strength of his grip on her hips and his breathless curses and harsh whispers about how good she felt, how much he’d wanted this, Rafael was more than willing to risk it. It didn’t take long, despite her best intentions, to come to the same conclusion—and not long after that to come again, period. He pulled her down into a kiss and followed soon enough after that she knew he’d only just managed to hold on, waiting for her.

Somehow that detail stuck, heavy with more emotional weight than she’d expected.

“You’re sweeter than I thought you’d be,” she said as they lay tangled up together.

He gasped, mock-offended. “I am _not._ Take it back.”

“Sweet, romantic, thoughtful. Nobody who saw you in scary prosecutor mode would guess it.”

“You’ve apparently spent a lot more time thinking about how I’d be in bed than the average juror did, I bet. How much time would you say that is, exactly?”

“I have the right to not incriminate myself, and will therefore decline to answer that.”

He exhaled a breath of laughter into her hair, then ran his fingers through it idly for a few minutes of gentle silence. When he stopped Olivia wondered if he’d fallen asleep but she was too comfortable herself to lift her head and check.

Then he spoke again, speculative and suspiciously casual. “So…did we ever reach a verdict on shower sex?”

* * *

 It felt like some ungodly hour when Noah’s voice piped up from the doorway.

“Mama? Was Uncle Rafa having bad dreams again?”

Then Olivia, sounding far more awake than anyone should this early:

“Hey, sweet boy. Yes, he was, but they’re gone now. Waffles for breakfast?” Noah must have nodded enthusiastically because she continued, “Okay, I’ll be right there. We’ll let Uncle Rafa sleep a little longer, won’t we?”

The blankets rustled as Olivia turned over and suddenly her voice was a lot closer, gentle as her fingers combing through his hair. “He’s gone.”

Rafael made a garbled grunting sound and rolled toward her, seeking out her body heat and trapping it against him with arms around her waist. He tucked his face somewhere near her neck and kissed what felt like a collarbone.

“Almost seven,” she said, translating the question correctly.

He’d never been a morning person, but he had extensive experience tolerating them. There’d been days in the not-at-all-distant past when he’d seen 7 a.m. because he hadn’t slept that night at all, or because he’d crashed on his office couch and woken up when the janitors came through at 6:30 in the morning. His own alarm had always been set for 7:30 but he didn’t need it often; anxiety worked better than any alarm clock.

Now 7 felt like fucking midnight and he wanted nothing more than to curl into Olivia’s warmth and go back to sleep. Though he wouldn’t be adverse to a repeat of last night’s activities in the very near future.

She’d wriggled one arm free of the covers and his best octopus impression, probably to check her phone, but he didn’t realize the devious implications of that until he heard the familiar click of a photo being taken.

“Oh, that’s a keeper,” Olivia said, and he pried his eyes open in time to catch her fond smile but not in time to snatch the phone away and delete incriminating evidence of his terrible bedhead. Her lips were still curved up when she kissed him.

Half-asleep and half-speechless that he got to do this—kiss Olivia Benson good morning like there was nothing miraculous about it—he managed, “I’d like to register my severe objections to the proceedings.”

She pulled away and responded archly, “Well, if you object so much—”

“Not _these_ proceedings,” he said hastily. “These proceedings should…proceed. I meant the ones where they don’t.”

Shit, now it was just sad, and he barely even had convalescence as an excuse anymore. No wonder Olivia was laughing at him.

“Part and parcel, Rafael. To get me you also get to spend most of your time on a five-year-old’s schedule. Sure that’s what you want?”

She still sounded like she was joking, but there was real insecurity there. They’d talked about it often enough, about how balancing her job and her son was a constant struggle. The time commitments for both were insane, and then there was the emotional cost on top of that—it didn’t leave a lot in reserve for Olivia herself, and even less for her to put into a relationship. Rafael wasn’t enough of an egomaniac to think that the reason her previous ones hadn’t lasted had anything to do with him. It was just that none of Olivia’s exes had understood like he did that loving her meant loving it all: the job that mattered, the kid she adored, and every facet of the woman who had the entire squad over for dinner but also needed the occasional night to herself with a book and a glass of red wine.

And he did love it all. He had for a long time now. Reassuring her of that was worth the long climb to consciousness and coherence, so he sat up and caught her hand just before she reached for her robe.

“Hold on a minute, please? Let me say this. In case I wasn’t clear about it last night, I do want the entire package.” He paused, that great gift with words slipping away when he needed it most. “I wasn’t very good with him as a baby but Noah’s turning into a really cool kid. It would make me happy to spend more time with him. And I understand more than anyone the kind of pressure you deal with at work, the cost of doing the job. I just want to be here, as close and for as long as you’ll let me, for all of it. That’s what I mean when I say I love you.”

“ _All of it_ is a hell of a lot,” she pointed out dryly.

“Try me. I won’t let you down again.”

“No more walking away?”

It was really a condition, not a question, and she really meant running, not walking. He nodded to both. “Not unless you tell me to go.”

Olivia’s eyes darted to the door as an ominous _thud_ came from the kitchen area, and Rafael knew that the conversation was over for now. Noah came first. But he was selfishly pleased that Olivia seemed reluctant to pull away and said, unnecessarily, “Press pause, resume later?”

“Of course.”

She tossed him a smile as she shrugged on her bathrobe. Then, as he threw back the covers and peered under the bed for his sweatpants, “What are you doing?”

“Thought I’d see if Noah doesn’t mind sharing those waffles. Unless you want time with him alone?”

She shook her head. He saw the assurances that he could go back to sleep, he didn’t have to keep to their schedule _,_ on the tip of her tongue and saw also the moment she realized that he wouldn’t have offered to have breakfast with them if he hadn’t really wanted to. So instead she kissed him and said, “No, that’s…that’s fine. More than fine. He’ll love it.”

She was right. Noah wasn’t surprised when Uncle Rafa was at dinner anymore, but Uncle Rafa at _breakfast_ was new and exciting enough to keep the kid babbling while simultaneously consuming two blueberry Eggos and a truly troubling amount of maple syrup (he added triple the amount she’d allowed him when Olivia’s back was turned, peering sideways at Rafael to make sure he wouldn’t snitch, and Rafael winked and said nothing because he wasn’t an idiot). Olivia brought him coffee in the mug he’d started to think of as his a few days ago and squeezed his hand under the table, sensing that he was a little uncomfortable with how uncomfortable he wasn’t. He’d never had this, or wanted it particularly. But now…

There was a moment somewhere around Noah’s second waffle when he saw with a flash like a premonition more days like this, so many they became routine, and for those few seconds the future was so bright that he couldn’t see the faces of Drew or the men who’d attacked him at all.

The vague puzzlement that drifted in the back of his mind all day didn’t rise to the surface in real words until mid-afternoon, when he was pouring another cup of coffee—Olivia had finally given him unfettered access to the pot—to drink in front of the living room window. It was one of those confusing winter days that required both scarf and sunglasses, and he could just about see the sparkle of light off the Hudson on the other side of the monument at West 89th. With his thoughts drifting pleasantly, the question finally coalesced.

He pulled out his phone.

_Noah didn’t seem surprised to find us in the same room this morning._

A slow day until a meeting at three, Olivia had said in her last text twenty minutes before, sounding bored out of her mind. She responded almost immediately.

_I slept in there a few times when you had bad nights. Not quite the same, but he doesn’t know that._

Then, a few seconds later, _You might not remember. It seemed to help._

 _I wish I could_ , he sent back.

He didn’t. There was a lot that was still fuzzy about the past few weeks. The therapist he should see would say that it was pointless to worry about the gaps; some things would come back, some wouldn’t, it was all a crapshoot with traumatic events that involved long periods of unconsciousness and the kinds of drugs they’d shot him up with. When he really searched the dark corners of half-memories it wasn’t sights or sounds but undiluted fear that came back first, cloying and vacuum-black, with no way to orient himself or escape. If he could bear the breathlessness and galloping heart rate of a classic panic attack for long enough sometimes he’d get his hospital room from a new angle, or his mother’s voice in Olivia’s living room, but the memories he actually wanted back might as well not have happened at all.

His phone chimed, like Olivia had read his mind from half the city away.

_Even if you don’t, it’s okay. We can do better. Obviously._

He smiled. Then, as it struck him, _I didn’t have any nightmares at all last night._

_Me neither._

When he caught himself smiling at his phone _again,_ Rafael deliberately put it away; he was a grown man, not a teenaged boy texting a crush. He took another sip of coffee in front of the window and closed his eyes against the bright sun. It was warm in Olivia’s apartment but almost freezing outside, according to the news. He had the right clothes for the weather, his mother had dropped them off with his other things, but they’d hung untouched in the closet ever since.

He hadn’t left Olivia’s apartment since he’d come home from the hospital. Hadn’t been able to at first, then hadn’t needed to—where was he going to go? the job he didn’t have, the apartment he couldn’t bear to set foot in?—then hadn’t wanted to. Not in the way he’d shut out the world while depression-spiraling at his mother’s house after Drew’s death; he wanted to hold the things he loved close this time, not push them away. Olivia’s apartment was the perfect microcosmic universe: all the people he wanted to see were here, or could come here, there was delivery for food and the internet for the outside world and a window with a hell of a view. It was safe here. _He_ was safe here.

Olivia hadn’t fought his voluntary hermitage because his attackers were still out there. Theoretically any move on his part, something as simple as ducking around the corner to Whole Foods, could give them the opportunity to strike again and finish the job. But that didn’t mean he was on lockdown, she’d assured him, just that he should be careful.

“Consider me your personal security detail,” she’d said. “Anything you want to do, anywhere you want to go, I’ll just tag along. It’ll be fun. Or I can keep my distance a little if you want to pretend I’m not there.”

“What am I, a teenager at the mall trying not to be seen with his mother?” he’d asked. “I’m fine, Liv. I don’t need to go anywhere, it’s not an issue.”

“Who are you and what did you do with Rafael Barba? He’d be out of his mind with boredom by now.”

“I’m just not quite back on my feet yet. You’ll know when I start to go stir-crazy, trust me,” he’d said with his old brusqueness, but it was only to placate her.

She’d looked at him suspiciously then let it slide, probably thinking that he was too proud to admit how shaken he still was, as if the nightmares that woke him gasping for breath didn’t give it away. He didn’t know how to explain to her that she’d already seen him at his least dignified; there was no pride to protect anymore. It was more than the attackers. His whole world had undergone a seismic shift and he wasn’t sure he could trust it, or himself in it, just yet.

Rafael had found himself thinking a lot about Emerson recently. In one of his essays he’d written something about escaping the custody of the body. Bodies didn’t mean anything without souls to reach for higher realms of spiritual truth; they were supposed to be synchronized, working for the same goal. When he woke up in the hospital—and ever since—he felt like they’d been disconnected. His soul was free and his body was this broken _thing_ that someone had taken from him and returned damaged, with no way to get rid of it. Like a prison. He knew he couldn’t actually _escape_ it—well, maybe he’d thought so for a short while in the beginning, when they were pumping him with the primo horse tranquilizers—but once his head started to clear he just wanted to feel like himself again. Feel whole.

If he told Olivia about any of this, she’d be concerned, maybe even alarmed. She’d say that as a defense mechanism the fractured sense of self he was describing increased the risk of repressing memories and undermining recovery. It wasn’t a good sign. And it was a bad idea to jump into new relationships, sexual partners, or make other massive life changes when those issues were unresolved. She’d tell him something like, _Rafael, you know that there’s no substitute for time in the healing process after traumas like the one you’ve been through._

In other words, it would take more than a week to recover from a near-death experience that came complete with bonus medical coma. However much he wanted to feel normal _right now,_ he had to accept that if he waited to live his life until he felt like his old self he might never leave Olivia’s apartment at all. Right now he was aware—and most of the time he even believed—that all the fragments of him, even the damaged ones, would synchronize again one day. Maybe not exactly the way they had before, but that would have to be a good enough starting point.

He sent one more text.

_It looks nice outside. Maybe we could go for a walk later?_

Three dots as she typed, and then: _Looking forward to it._


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> FakePlastikTrees, it only took like two months longer than planned, but here you go: fic complete :)

“I was thinking of selling my apartment,” Rafael said.

They were on the far side of Riverside Park west of the highway, leaning against the guardrails as they watched the setting sunlight sparkle on the Hudson. Seven p.m. and still light out—maybe there was hope for spring after all.

Olivia turned her head, still half lost in thought about how nice it was out. How nice all of this was, really. Contentment was a rare emotion in her life but she’d felt more of it in the past few weeks than she had for months at a time before.

“You were?” she said.

He looked at her briefly, then back across the river to New Jersey, nodding meditatively. “I can’t live there again, it’s a flashback waiting to happen and I’m having trouble enough with those as it is. I was thinking of moving anyway, before the attack. New job, new place, new chapter, you know.”

She hummed the kind of vague acknowledgment that meant he should go on.

“I like this area, and it would be an easy commute if that interview with Columbia went as well as I think it did.”

“Professor Barba,” Olivia said, grinning.

“You don’t think I’d be a good teacher?” he said, pretending to pout but unable to hold it more than a few seconds before smiling back. She’d seen him smile more in the past few weeks than she had for months at a time before, too. Real ones too, wide and sincere, not the tight-lipped grimaces he’d offered when professionalism demanded it.

“I know you’d be a _great_ teacher,” she assured him. “You’ve already taught Noah how to build a Lego spaceship that actually looks like a spaceship. And how to campaign successfully for more maple syrup than he really should be allowed.”

“No, I just taught him to get permission for something he was doing already, to get credit for honesty when he campaigns for the _next_ thing,” Rafael insisted, with another of those crooked grins. She liked them best, Olivia had decided.

“You wouldn’t mind, if we were neighbors?” he said, a little tentatively. “Not literal neighbors, I don’t mean in your building, but there are some places on Broadway I’ve been looking at, and one on 88th right near here with a great view of the park and extra room in case my mother visits—or Noah, he could stay with me if Lucy’s busy, if he wanted to.”

There was a sweetly heartbreaking hesitancy there, like he didn’t know that Noah thought he hung the fucking moon and would probably never want to come home, if staying at Uncle Rafa’s cool grownup apartment was on the table. Then again, maybe he _didn’t_ know that—for all that he and Noah seemed mutually fascinated by each other, Rafael hadn’t been around a lot of kids in his life, certainly not for extended periods of time. Maybe he had no clue how special it was that Noah had taken to him the way he had.

But the words to convey that, emotionally charged as they’d be, escaped her on a peaceful evening like this, with the sun on the water and just a sweater enough to keep her warm. Moving closer to him so that they bumped shoulders, Olivia kept it simple instead.

“He’d miss having you around all the time.”

“That’ll be mutual,” Rafael said. After a few quiet seconds he sighed and went on. “It’s a good apartment, it should sell fast once they finish with the floors. Another week on that, maybe two, contractors say. Shouldn’t be a problem to have a new place lined up by then.”

“This is what’s been on your mind the past few days,” Olivia realized. She’d known that he was struggling with something unrelated to Drew or to the attack, was learning to recognize the nightmares and flinches and troubled silences that meant he’d been trapped in _those_ memories. This was something softer and sadder. He held her a little tighter, talked more about his abuelita when he made family recipes, catered to Noah’s every whim even though he’d already seen _Finding Nemo_ three times this week.

“I’m trying to get out of your hair, Liv,” he said. “As grateful as I am for everything you’ve done for me, I can’t be… _crashing_ with you indefinitely. I’m too invested in making this work, and if it’s going to we have to be equals. And I know you probably want your life with Noah back.”

“I’m not going to tell you what to do, but it doesn’t make sense to…what, stay in a hotel until you have a new place? That’s not safe, Rafa, you’ve got to see that.”

Rafael turned his back on the river and leaned with his elbows propped on the guardrail, nodding reluctant acknowledgment of her point. “I thought about that too. I’d like to sublet your guest room. Officially. At least that way I’d be---contributing, somehow.”

Finally Olivia couldn’t keep up the façade of nonchalance anymore and started laughing, dropping her head to his shoulder when his baffled expression made the whole situation even funnier.

“Rafael, you haven’t even been in that room in a week. You sleep with me, your clothes are in my closet, you spend an absurd amount of time on your hair in my bathroom—”

“That’s not the point!” he interrupted, though at least the painful earnestness had given way to wry amusement. “It’s a—a gesture, a symbol, a metaphor, _something_ like that.”

She was still choking back laughter. “Don’t get me wrong, it is nice to know that you didn’t leave your flair for the dramatic in the courtroom—”

“Liv, I am actually being serious here. I would feel better about staying with you for another few weeks if I wasn’t taking advantage of your generosity more than I already have.”

Olivia forced herself to sober up, stop laughing, and appreciate that this meant something to him, this perceived inequality. It wasn’t fragile masculinity, it wasn’t even really about the room; it was about control, about having a space that was his and not subject to the whims of anyone else, even someone he loved and trusted as much as he did her. About belonging, too, and stability, and change at a pace he chose. Just because it was textbook didn’t mean it wasn’t valid or very real to him. And she understood all of that, she did. She’d felt similarly after she escaped William Lewis. But she’d felt alone too, and he didn’t have to.

“Say I let you rent that room. Does that mean you’d be staying there again?”

“I sincerely hope not. Would you want me to?” he said, so alarmed she might have laughed again if she hadn’t been so determined to tread carefully, to navigate them through this before it got out of hand.

“Rafa, my love. This is what I want,” she said, stepping in front of him and cupping his face in her hands. Like it was second nature he let his fall to her waist, his long fingers curving along the ridge of her hipbone. He looked at her like she had all the answers and she kissed him, she couldn’t not. “I want you to understand all the ways you’ve contributed already to the health and happiness of me _and_ my son. It’s not about money. It’s about your grandmother’s moros y christianos and the way you kiss me when you see I’ve had a rough day. Hell, you see when _Noah_ ’s had a rough day. You have weaseled your way into our lives, as _some_ _one_ might put it, and made yourself an indispensable part of them. You take care of us as much as I ever took care of you. Do you see that?”

He sighed and tipped his forehead to rest against hers. He wasn’t convinced, but he was listening.

“Now, you can move out if you want to,” she said into the quiet inches between them. “Of course you can. It _will_ be moving out, though. You haven’t been ‘crashing with me,’ we’re not twenty. You moved in—unconventionally, sure, but so what? But here’s the thing. I’m just as invested in this as you are, and I can promise you now that I’m going to ask you to move back in one day. So wouldn’t it make sense to skip moving _twice,_ save the U-Haul fees, and just let ourselves enjoy this?”

He exhaled a breath of surprised laughter, then went quiet again. This time she let him sort out his thoughts, waiting until he admitted, “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I waited so long, I wanted to do it right, with—I don’t know, dates and flowers and all that corny movie shit. A healthy, normal adult relationship, like you deserve. And now it’s all backwards and after everything I’m not who I was either, I don’t know if I’ll ever be just like before—”

It clicked suddenly, his real worry—that he was somehow less now, and what he was wouldn’t be enough for her. She pulled back enough to look him in the eye, baffled.

“You think _I’ll_ think you’re not the man I fell in love with, because of what’s happened? Rafa, it wasn’t the job and the suits that made me fall for you, and if you think you’re any less the arrogant, infuriating smartass you were before, I have some shocking news for you.”

He didn’t rise to that bait. “Can you honestly tell me it doesn’t bother you at all?”

“Yes, I can,” she said firmly. “Nothing that’s happened recently has been _normal_ and I wouldn’t bet high on the future either. But we are more than the things that happen to us. If I didn’t believe that with all of my heart I wouldn’t be in this line of work, I wouldn’t have met you, and we wouldn’t be here. So we got the order a little mixed up. It doesn’t mean we have to start from scratch. We already lost enough time, don’t you think?”

He nodded just a little, just enough. Standing this close it was impossible to miss the way his eyes grew watery and his jaw tightened. She closed her own eyes to give him the illusion of privacy as he wrestled his emotions back under control, so it was a surprise when she felt his mouth on hers again. This time the kiss was hotter and longer and didn’t show any sign of ending until a dog barked as its owner jogged by, startling them enough that they jumped apart. The resentful glare Rafael shot after it made Olivia snort with laughter again.

 “You know, if you’re absolutely determined to be involved with that guest room, I had been thinking of turning it into a home office. Could be useful for a professor.”

“Thought you weren’t going to tell me what to do,” he said dryly. “I made up my mind pretty fast there, didn’t I.”

But there was no heat in it so Olivia waved her hand dismissively. “You like it when I tell you what to do.”

“Well, I don’t always hate it,” Rafael smirked, and she could almost see the night before replaying in his head. Then his eyes shifted to something over her shoulder at the same time that a high voice rang out in the park behind her.

“Mama, Uncle Rafa! The dogs, let’s see the dogs!”

Olivia turned around to see Noah making a beeline for them at full speed, Lucy following at a much more sedate pace with a fond smile on her face. He’d had a playdate after school and jumped at the suggestion to meet them here after, since it meant he’d get to see the dogs at the run on West 87th on the way home. Lucy raised her hand to wave at them and Olivia did the same, feeling Rafael’s arm slip around her waist as they walked into the park to meet her son together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been real y'all <3

**Author's Note:**

> TW: Barba doesn't ACTUALLY try to kill himself, but his attackers try to make it look like he did (remember that death threat subplot that just kind of...disappeared? I SURE DO), and it's not super graphic but it's definitely more than implied. and liv rescues him bc of course she does.


End file.
